The warehouses of the future will come in a variety of forms, but with a few common ingredients. Firstly, human operational handling of items in warehouses is increasingly being replaced by automated item handling. Extended warehouse automation counteracts the scarcity of human operators and supports the quality of picking processes. Secondly, the development of models to simulate and analyse warehouse designs and their components facilitates the challenging task of developing warehouses that take into account each customer’s individual requirements and logistic processes. __Automation in Warehouse Development__ addresses both types of automation from the innovative perspective of applied science. In particular, it describes the outcomes of the Falcon project, a joint endeavour by a consortium of industrial and academic partners. The results include a model-based approach to automate warehouse control design, analysis models for warehouse design, concepts for robotic item handling and computer vision, and autonomous transport in warehouses. __Automation in Warehouse Development__ is targeted at both academic researchers and industrial practitioners. It provides state-of-the art research on warehouse automation and model-based warehouse design. These topics have been addressed from a systems engineering perspective by researchers from different disciplines including software, control, and mechanical engineering, with a clear focus on the industrial applications of their research. Front Matter....Pages i-xii Front Matter....Pages 1-1 The Falcon Project: Model-Based Design of Automated Warehouses....Pages 3-13 Front Matter....Pages 15-15 A Reference Architecture Capturing Structure and Behaviour of Warehouse Control....Pages 17-32 Decentralised Warehouse Control through Agent Organisations....Pages 33-44 Model-Driven Software Engineering....Pages 45-58 Front Matter....Pages 59-59 Aggregate Models of Order-Picking Workstations....Pages 61-73 Model Support for New Warehouse Concept Development....Pages 75-86 Warehouse System Configuration Support through Models....Pages 87-101 Front Matter....Pages 103-103 An Industrial Solution to Automated Item Picking....Pages 105-115 Underactuated Robotic Hands for Grasping in Warehouses....Pages 117-131 Item Recognition, Learning, and Manipulation in a Warehouse Input Station....Pages 133-152 Object Recognition and Localisation for Item Picking....Pages 153-162 Integration of an Automated Order-Picking System....Pages 163-173 Front Matter....Pages 175-175 Self-localisation and Map Building for Collision-Free Robot Motion....Pages 177-189 Flexible Transportation in Warehouses....Pages 191-207 Front Matter....Pages 209-209 Reflections on the Falcon Project....Pages 211-221 Back Matter....Pages 223-241
