论文标题

带有多交付站和异质机器人的智能仓库中有效的任务分配

Efficient Task Allocation in Smart Warehouses with Multi-delivery Stations and Heterogeneous Robots

论文作者

Oliveira, George S., Röning, Juha, Plentz, Patricia D. M., Carvalho, Jônata T.

论文摘要

多机器人系统(MRTA)中的任务分配问题是一个NP硬性问题,通常通过启发式算法找到可行的解决方案。考虑到增加物流的需求不断提高,使用机器人来提高物流仓库的效率已成为一种要求。在智能仓库中,主要任务包括采用一支自动采摘机器和移动机器人,通过从货架上订购的订单中拾取物品并将其放在送货站中来协调。两个方面通常证明了多机器人任务分配的复杂性:(i)环境方面,例如多交付站和分散的机器人(因为它们保持恒定运动)和(ii)机器人的异质性,机器人的交通速度和容量负载与彼此不同。尽管这些特性在文献中得到了广泛研究,但通常会分别研究它们。这项工作提出了针对具有多交付站和异质车队的智能仓库的可扩展和高效的任务分配算法。我们的策略采用了一种新颖的成本估计器,该估计器在收到新任务时,它根据机器人的可变特性和容量来计算成本。为了验证该策略,进行了一系列实验,以模拟具有多个输送站和het翼舰队的智能仓库的操作。结果表明,我们的策略生成的路线比最先进的任务分配算法生成的路线高达$ 33 $ \%,在代表我们目标场景的测试实例中,$ 96 $ \%。考虑到单退货站和非分散机器人,我们将机器人数量减少了$ 18 $ \%,分配任务$ 92 $ \%,并生成了其成本与最终算法所产生的路线相似的路线。

The task allocation problem in multi-robot systems (MRTA) is an NP-hard problem whose viable solutions are usually found by heuristic algorithms. Considering the increasing need of improvement on logistics, the use of robots for increasing the efficiency of logistics warehouses is becoming a requirement. In a smart warehouse the main tasks consist of employing a fleet of automated picking and mobile robots that coordinate by picking up items from a set of orders from the shelves and dropping them at the delivery stations. Two aspects generally justify multi-robot task allocation complexity: (i) environmental aspects, such as multi-delivery stations and dispersed robots (since they remain in constant motion) and (ii) fleet heterogeneity, where robots' traffic speed and capacity loads are different from each other. Despite these properties have been widely researched in the literature, they usually are investigated separately. This work proposes a scalable and efficient task allocation algorithm for smart warehouses with multi-delivery stations and heterogeneous fleets. Our strategy employs a novel cost estimator, which computes costs as a function of the robots' variable characteristics and capacity while they receive new tasks. For validating the strategy a series of experiments is performed simulating the operation of smart warehouses with multiple delivery stations and heteregenous fleets. The results show that our strategy generates routes costing up to $33$\% less than the routes generated by a state-of-the-art task allocation algorithm and $96$\% faster in test instances representing our target scenario. Considering single-delivery stations and non-dispersed robots, we reduced the number of robots by up to $18$\%, allocating tasks $92$\% faster, and generating routes whose costs are statistically similar to the routes generated by the state-of-the-art algorithm.

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