A heuristic approach to schedule mobile robots in flexible manufacturing environments

Modern manufacturing models demand customization, service-orientation and sustainability. The generations of mobile robots will therefore have to cope with more complex tasks and rapidly adapt to new situations. This paper deals with the problem of utilizing mobile robots efficiently in such manufacturing environments. Mobile robots, thanks to rapid technological development, are not only able to transport materials as traditional transporting robots but also perform manufacturing tasks at some machines by using their manipulation arms. These manufacturing tasks have lower priority and can be interrupted to allow the mobile robots to carry out multiple transport when needed. The performance criteria are to minimize the time required to complete all tasks, i.e. makespan. A heuristic approach based on genetic algorithms is developed to find the best solutions for the problem. A numerical example is conducted to demonstrate the result of the proposed approach.