ABSTRACT
The advantages of robotic palletizing include: the maximization of the usage of the pallet cube; the retention of knowledge about each parcel throughout the distribution system; increased pallet load stability, insurance of forming pallets in accordance with regulations i.e., not stacking poisons on top of food items, and control of parcel fragility, which reduces waste. All distributors, including the defense industries, parcel industries, and even medical industries, are potential users of a robotic palletizing system. Research in palletizing focuses on determining the optimal pallet size and on packing methodology to maximize space utilization. This chapter describes robotic palletizing, including the algorithms for real-time pallet stacking of mixed-size/content parcels using an expert-system approach. The goal of building an intelligent system for palletizing is fundamentally a problem of designing a decision maker with acceptable performance over a wide range of complexity in parcel sizes and uncertainty in parcel arrival sequences.
