Scheduling of mobile robots with preemptive tasks

Abstract

This paper deals with the problem of scheduling of mobile robots taking into account preemption cases in a flexible manufacturing system (FMS). In addition to capability of transporting materials between some machines, mobile robots are able to perform manufacturing tasks at other machines by using their manipulation arms. These manufacturing tasks can be preempted to allow mobile robots to transport materials when needed. The performance criterion is to minimize time required to complete all tasks, i.e. makespan. A mixed-integer programming (MIP) model is formulated to find the optimal solutions for the problem. Numerical experiments are investigated to demonstrate results of the proposed approach. © Springer International Publishing Switzerland 2014.