Scheduling method of robotic cells with robot-collaborated process and residency constraints

Abstract

As a typical NP-hard optimisation problem, the Robotic Cells Scheduling Problem (RCSP) concerning how to obtain the optimum sequence of robot activities widely exists in the fields of incorporate automation and repetitive processing. A RCSP with residency constraints and robot-collaborated process (RCP), where robots concurrently perform collaborated tasks (e.g. accurately readjust location, measure size and add reagent) in addition to part transportation, is presented in this paper. According to the constraints in real engineering practise, a non-linear programming model of single-gripper robotic cells is established to minimise the average manufacturing cycle time. A Tabu Circulatory Time Point (TCTP) searching algorithm is proposed on the basis of analyses. In addition, a lower bound (LB) on the average manufacturing cycle time is established. Finally, through extensive simulation experiments, the results indicate that the proposed algorithm can generate high-quality solutions.