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International Conference on Intelligent Autonomous Systems

IAS 2018: Intelligent Autonomous Systems 15 pp 237–249Cite as

Heterogeneous Multi-agent Routing Strategy for Robot-and-Picker-to-Good Order Fulfillment System

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Part of the book series: Advances in Intelligent Systems and Computing ((AISC,volume 867))

Abstract

In this research heterogeneous multi-agent routing strategy for a robot-and-picker-to-good order fulfillment system based on collaboration between mobile robots and human workers is proposed. As it is intractable to solve all agents’ routing problems as a large global optimization problem, individual agent’s routing is planned separately based on utility-based heuristics. Both the robot and the worker routing problems are formulated as graph optimization problems based on the graph representation of robot’s task and dynamically induced subtasks of the worker. The total travel distance of the robot and the total waiting time criteria are optimized by genetic algorithm. The long-term performance of the proposed routing strategy is evaluated according to different indicators using hybrid event simulation. The results show that order fulfillment system with the proposed routing strategy can either extensively save manual labor or improve the system efficiency.

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Acknowledgment

This work is supported by the National Key R&D Program of China (Grant 2017YFB1303601); Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant 61773261 and 61573243); and the Innovation Action Plan of STCSM (Grant 16111106202).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Key Laboratory of System Control and Information Processing, Ministry of Education of China, Shanghai, China

    Hanfu Wang, Weidong Chen & Jingchuan Wang

  2. Department of Automation, Shanghai Jiao Tong University, Shanghai, China

    Hanfu Wang, Weidong Chen & Jingchuan Wang

  3. Shanghai Key Laboratory of Navigation and Location Based Services, Shanghai, China

    Hanfu Wang, Weidong Chen & Jingchuan Wang

Authors
  1. Hanfu Wang
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  2. Weidong Chen
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  3. Jingchuan Wang
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Weidong Chen .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Baden-Wuerttemberg Cooperative State University, Karlsruhe, Germany

    Marcus Strand

  2. Humanoids and Intelligence Systems Lab, KIT - Karlsruher Institut für Technologie, Karlsruhe, Germany

    Rüdiger Dillmann

  3. University of Padua , Padua, Italy

    Emanuele Menegatti

  4. University of Padua, Padua, Italy

    Stefano Ghidoni

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Wang, H., Chen, W., Wang, J. (2019). Heterogeneous Multi-agent Routing Strategy for Robot-and-Picker-to-Good Order Fulfillment System. In: Strand, M., Dillmann, R., Menegatti, E., Ghidoni, S. (eds) Intelligent Autonomous Systems 15. IAS 2018. Advances in Intelligent Systems and Computing, vol 867. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-01370-7_19

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