3D Position Estimation of Objects for Inventory Management Automation Using Drones

With the recent development of drone technology, drones are being used in various fields. Drones have the advantage of being equipped with various devices to move freely and perform various tasks. In the field of inventory management, many studies have been conducted into management automation based on the drone. Drones scan a marker, such as a quick response code (QR code), attached to the shelves to obtain location information of the shelves on which the inventory is loaded. At the same time, drones perform inventory management by scanning the marker attached to the inventory to obtain inventory information. However, unlike indoor warehouses, where grids or shelves are well-defined, a storage yard is not fixed in the location where the inventory is stored. It is difficult to recognize the loading position from the marker for a storage yard without shelves and grids. Furthermore, the loading position of the inventory is not fixed. For the automation of inventory management of warehouses where shelves and grids are undefined, this paper proposes a framework that estimates the inventory 3D position in the video frame based on a deep learning model. The proposed framework uses the image segmentation model to detect and decode the marker in the video frame to estimate the 3D position of a drone and inventory. In addition, the estimated inventory 3D position is corrected using the continuity of the video frame. Experiment results on the video dataset verified that the proposed framework improved the 3D position estimation performance of the inventory. Consequently, efficient inventory management based on drones can be performed through the proposed framework for the 3D position estimation of inventory in all types of warehouses.