Multirobot Task Allocation in e-Commerce Robotic Mobile Fulfillment Systems

Robotic Mobile Fulfillment System (RMFS) is a new type of parts-to-picker order picking system and has become the development trend of e-commerce logistics distribution centers. There are usually a large number of tasks need to be allocated to many robots and the picking time for e-commerce orders i...

Descripción completa

Guardado en:
Detalles Bibliográficos
Autores principales: Ruiping Yuan, Juntao Li, Xiaolin Wang, Liyan He
Formato: article
Lenguaje:EN
Publicado: Hindawi Limited 2021
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://doaj.org/article/930f30cc69dd42f5a631c6fb9ebf3e3d
Etiquetas: Agregar Etiqueta
Sin Etiquetas, Sea el primero en etiquetar este registro!
Descripción
Sumario:Robotic Mobile Fulfillment System (RMFS) is a new type of parts-to-picker order picking system and has become the development trend of e-commerce logistics distribution centers. There are usually a large number of tasks need to be allocated to many robots and the picking time for e-commerce orders is usually very tight, which puts forward higher requirements for the efficiency of multirobot task allocation (MRTA) in e-commerce RMFS. Current researches on MRTA in RMFS seldom consider task correlation and the balance among picking stations. In this paper, a task time cost model considering task correlation is built according to the characteristics of the picking process. Then, a multirobot task allocation model minimizing the overall picking time is established considering both the picking time balance of picking stations and the load balance of robots. Finally, a four-stage balanced heuristic auction algorithm is designed to solve the task allocation model and the tasks with execution sequence for each robot are obtained. By comparing with the traditional task time cost model and the algorithm without considering the balance among picking stations, it is found that the proposed model and algorithm can significantly shorten the overall picking time.