Heuristics for Robots-Humans Tasks Assignment in a Containers Loading Center. Issue 10 (2019)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Selma, C.; Thevenin, S.; Mebarki, N.; Cardin, O.; Tamzalit, D.; Thiériot, D.; Bruggeman, L.
• Is Part Of: IFAC-PapersOnLine. Volume 52:Issue 10(2019)
• Page Start: 13
• Page End: 18
• Publication Date: 2019
• Subjects: Operations research -- Intelligent manufacturing systems -- Heuristics -- Production control -- Sensitivity analysis; Automatic control -- Periodicals; 629.805
• DOI: 10.1016/j.ifacol.2019.10.011
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 2405-8963

Abstract

Abstract: To improve working conditions at sorting centers and to reduce the burden, La Poste wants to automate a part of the container-handling process. This mainly concerns containers that belong to the destinations with highest traffic since they demand an important effort and time amount from the operators especially in critical times like truck-departure times, when the operators must quickly load the containers in carts to be transported in trucks so that no delay will occur to the delivery date of the mail items. In this paper, we give a mixed integer linear program to assign the tasks to the robots, in order to maximize the workload of the robots and minimize the effort made by the operators. In addition, a greedy heuristic is proposed. Experiments performed on realistic data confirm the performance of the greedy algorithm. In addition, a sensitivity analysis of the heuristic is given to test its robustness on noisy data.