Coordinating Hundreds of Cooperative, Autonomous Vehicles in Warehouses

The years of research on robotics and multiagent systems are coming together to provide just such a disruption to the material-handling industry. While autonomous guided vehicles (AGVs) have been used to move material within warehouses since the 1950s, they have been used primarily to transport very large, very heavy objects like rolls of uncut paper or engine blocks. The confluence of inexpensive wireless communications, computational power, and robotic components are making autonomous vehicles cheaper, smaller, and more capable. In recent years, we have seen an increase in the use of autonomous vehicles in the field. Examples include teleoperated military devices like iRobot's Packbot and the pilotless Predator aircraft, both of which have seen service in Iraq and Afghanistan.