Logistics & Robotics
Warehouse Robot Navigation
A robot that learns to find its way around a warehouse by itself, including layouts it has never seen.
01The problem
Warehouse robots usually follow routes someone has programmed by hand. Every time the shelves move or a new aisle opens, those routes have to be redone. The more often the layout changes, the more that upkeep costs.
02What it does
Instead of being given routes, this robot learns how to reach a goal. Once trained, it can be dropped into a warehouse layout it has never seen and still find its way.
03How it works
The robot learns by trial and error in a simulated warehouse. It is rewarded for reaching the goal and penalised for wasted moves or collisions, much like training a dog with treats. Over many thousands of attempts it works out a general way of moving towards a goal, rather than memorising one map. The training method used is called PPO, a common and stable way of teaching an agent through rewards.
04What came out of it
Route finding becomes a skill the robot has learned, not a rulebook someone must keep up to date. It is also the one project here that does not use a language model at all, which is a useful reminder that not every AI problem is a chatbot problem.
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Want the technical detail?
The code and the full technical write up are on GitHub.