The Combined Problem of Online Task Assignment and Lifelong Path Finding in Logistics Warehouses: Rule-Based Systems Matter

We study the combined problem of online task assignment and lifelong path finding, which is crucial for the logistics industries. However, most literature either (1) focuses on lifelong path finding assuming a given task assigner, or (2) studies the offline version of this problem where tasks are known in advance. We argue that, to maximize the system throughput, the online version that integrates these two components should be tackled directly. To this end, we introduce a formal framework of the combined problem and its solution concept. Then, we design a rule-based lifelong planner under a practical robot model that works well even in environments with severe local congestion. Upon that, we automate the search for the task assigner with respect to the underlying path planner. Simulation experiments conducted in warehouse scenarios at Meituan, one of the largest shopping platforms in China, demonstrate that (a)in terms of time efficiency, our system requires only 83.77% of the execution time needed for the currently deployed system at Meituan, outperforming other SOTA algorithms by 8.09%; (b)in terms of economic efficiency, ours can achieve the same throughput with only 60% of the agents currently in use. The code and demos are available at https://github.com/Fernadoo/Online-TAPF.