Automatic Verification Flow Shop Scheduling of Electric Energy Meters Based on an Improved Q-Learning Algorithm

Abstract

Considering the engineering problem of electric energy meter automatic verification and scheduling, this paper proposes a novel scheduling scheme based on an improved Q-learning algorithm. First, by introducing the state variables and behavior variables, the ranking problem of combinatorial optimization is transformed into a sequential decision problem. Then, a novel reward function is proposed to evaluate the pros and cons of the different strategies. In particular, this paper considers adopting the reinforcement learning algorithm to efficiently solve the problem. In addition, this paper also considers the ratio of exploration and utilization in the reinforcement learning process, and then provides reasonable exploration and utilization through an iterative updating scheme. Meanwhile, a decoupling strategy is introduced to address the restriction of over estimation. Finally, real time data from a provincial electric energy meter automatic verification center are used to verify the effectiveness of the proposed algorithm.