Single Mobile Robot Scheduling in Manufacturing Environment

Abstract

A methodology for intelligent material transport that takes into account the problem of planning and scheduling the transport tasks of a mobile robot is presented in the paper. The performance criterion was adopted to minimize the total transport time of the mobile robot while transporting raw materials, semi-finished products and parts within the manufacturing system. The particle swarm optimization algorithm (PSO) was developed in order to find an optimal solution to the internal transport scheduling problem. Scheduling plans were obtained in the MATLAB programming environment and were tested using the Khepera II mobile robot within the static laboratory model of the manufacturing environment. The experimental results show the applicability and efficiency of the developed intelligent approach in real conditions.