OPERATIONS RESEARCH

Through close cooperation with leading industry and academic partners we focus on both the practical applications of operations research as well as on strengthening the field’s theoretical basis through method development and testing. The Operations Research group focuses on research in the domains of manufacturing, transportation and defense.

The group’s current research is primarily focused on fully autonomous manufacturing systems using automated guided vehicles (AGVs), mobile robots and unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs). In this area we develop and implement planning, scheduling and routing algorithms. Due to stochastic elements and unpredicted events in this type of environment, it is necessary to very quickly plan and re-schedule operations for execution. This requires developing methods and tools that enables finding solutions in on-line mode. This is truly a challenging topic that requires novel approaches.

Solving complex industrial problems requires developing different solutions (based on e.g. genetic algorithms, heuristics, meta-heuristics and constraint programming techniques) implemented as prototypes and decision support systems.