Robotic Mobile Fulfillment Systems: A survey on recent developments and research opportunities

Abstract

With the advancement of the autonomous mobile robots applied to Warehouses and the creation of the Robotic Mobile Fulfillment System after the market implementation of the Kiva Robots, it is necessary to carry out a deeper approach of the researches carried out to this date. The objective of this survey is to provide a unified and accessible presentation of the basic concepts of a warehouse system, such as its types, layouts, systems, and methodologies already applied to improve the activities, thus going to the latest research and methodologies focused on the development of new architectures and algorithms in Robotic Mobile Fulfillment Systems (RMFS). The main contribution of this work is an attempt to present a comprehensive review of recent breakthroughs in the goods-to-person RMFS field, providing links to the most interesting and successful works from the state-of-the-art, but also to provide a presentation and summary of how a Warehouse systems works, in a way that allows future researchers to understand his taxonomies and principles of operation.