Embodiments of the present application disclose a map generation system and method. By scanning or processing an article in an article shelf, the technical solution of an embodiment of the present application may take as a position of the article a position of a handheld terminal at the time of the scanning or the processing, or take as the position of the article a position of a wireless apparatus corresponding to the scanned or processed article, to generate a navigation map according to the position of each article. The embodiment of the present application realizes the automatic generation of the map and improves the accuracy of drawing the map.