Cyclic scheduling of a robotic cell

Abstract

The paper deals with human-computer interaction in which the cooperation leads to solve a difficult issue of discrete optimization. Considered jobs scheduling problem in a robotic cell consisting of two machines and a robotic operator. Only one of two machines can work at a time and there are setup times between successive operations on a machine. The goal is to determine a schedule - permutation of jobs - and an assignment of jobs to machines, which minimize the minimal cycle time. We show that although there is exponential number of assignments of jobs to machines, it is possible to determine optimal assignment in the polynomial time. Next, we propose higher level metaheuristics - tabu search and evolutionary algorithm.