TY - JOUR
T1 - A Scheduling Solution for Robotic Arm-Based Batching Systems with Multiple Conveyor Belts
AU - Nielsen, Kasper Gaj
AU - Sung, Inkyung
AU - Yafrani, Mohamed El
AU - Kılıç, Deniz Kenan
AU - Nielsen, Peter
PY - 2023/3/21
Y1 - 2023/3/21
N2 - In this study, we tackle a key scheduling problem in a robotic arm-based food processing system, where multiple conveyors—an infeed conveyor that feeds food items to robotic arms and two tray lane conveyors, on which trays to batch food items are placed—are implemented. The target scheduling problem is to determine what item on an infeed conveyor belt is picked up by which robotic arm at what position, and on which tray the picked up item will be placed. This problem involves critical constraints, such as sequence-dependent processing time and dynamic item and tray positions. Moreover, due to the speed of the infeed conveyor and latency in the information about entering items into the system, this scheduling problem must be solved in near real time. To address these challenges, we propose a scheduling solution that first decomposes the original scheduling problem into sub-problems, where a sub-problem formulated as a goal program schedules robotic arms only for a single tray. The performance of the proposed solution approach is then tested under a simulation environment, and from the experiments, the proposed approach produces acceptable performance.
AB - In this study, we tackle a key scheduling problem in a robotic arm-based food processing system, where multiple conveyors—an infeed conveyor that feeds food items to robotic arms and two tray lane conveyors, on which trays to batch food items are placed—are implemented. The target scheduling problem is to determine what item on an infeed conveyor belt is picked up by which robotic arm at what position, and on which tray the picked up item will be placed. This problem involves critical constraints, such as sequence-dependent processing time and dynamic item and tray positions. Moreover, due to the speed of the infeed conveyor and latency in the information about entering items into the system, this scheduling problem must be solved in near real time. To address these challenges, we propose a scheduling solution that first decomposes the original scheduling problem into sub-problems, where a sub-problem formulated as a goal program schedules robotic arms only for a single tray. The performance of the proposed solution approach is then tested under a simulation environment, and from the experiments, the proposed approach produces acceptable performance.
KW - give-away minimization
KW - real-time decision making
KW - robotic arm-based batching systems
KW - robotic task-sequencing problem
KW - scheduling robotic arms
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85151097551&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.3390/a16030172
DO - 10.3390/a16030172
M3 - Journal article
SN - 1017-1398
VL - 16
JO - Algorithms
JF - Algorithms
IS - 3
M1 - 172
ER -