Scheduling Mobile Robots in Flexible Manufacturing System by An Adaptive Large Neighborhood Search

Abstract

Robots play an important role in the production and processing of auxiliary products in flexible manufacturing systems. Mobile robots can quickly and easily transport goods from warehouses to individual production workshops. This paper studies the path planning problem of using mobile robots to provide goods. This problem is called mobile robot path planning (MRPP) problem. An improved algorithm based on adaptive large neighborhood search called ALNSI is proposed. This algorithm integrates the characteristics of this problem into the search framework and has designed various destroy and repair methods according to the problem. Both the destroy and repair methods include strategies for tasks and mobile robots. A path reconstruction algorithm for ensuring the feasibility of scheme is also included in neighborhood search framework. The algorithm proposed in this paper has better performance in experimental verification than comparison algorithms and can be better used in flexible manufacturing systems.