Task allocation of intelligent warehouse picking system based on multi-robot coalition

Abstract

In intelligent warehouse picking system, the allocation of tasks has an important influence on the efficiency of the whole system because of the large number of robots and orders. The paper proposes a method to solve the task allocation problem that multi-robot task allocation problem is transformed into transportation problem to find a collision-free task allocation scheme and then improve the capability of task processing. The task time window and the power consumption of multi-robot (driving distance) are regarded as the utility function and the maximized utility function is the objective function. Then an integer programming formulation is constructed considering the number of task assignment on an agent according to their battery consumption restriction. The problem of task allocation is solved by table working method. Finally, simulation modeling of the methods based on table working method is carried out. Results show that the method has good performance and can improve the efficiency of the task execution.