Energy-Efficient Routing of a Multirobot Station: A Flexible Time-Space Network Approach

Jianbin Xin, Chuang Meng, Andrea D'Ariano, Frederik Schulte, Jinzhu Peng*, Rudy R. Negenborn

*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Contribution to journalArticleScientificpeer-review

1 Citation (Scopus)
28 Downloads (Pure)

Abstract

This paper investigates a novel routing problem of a multi-robot station in a manufacturing cell. In the existing literature, the objective is to minimize the cycle time or energy consumption separately. The routing problem considered in this paper aims to reduce the cycle time and energy consumption jointly for each robot while avoiding collisions between these robots. For this routing problem, we propose a new flexible time-space network model that allows us to reduce energy consumption while minimizing the cycle time. The corresponding optimization problem is Mixed-Integer Nonlinear Programming (MINLP). For addressing its computational complexity, this paper designs a metaheuristic algorithm tailored to the studied problem and proposes an ϵ-constraint algorithm to study the trade-off between these two objectives. We conduct industrially relevant simulation experiments of case studies to show its effectiveness, in comparison to a conventional method, two state-of-the-art solvers, and two commonly-used metaheuristics. The results show that the proposed methodology can reduce energy consumption by up to 30% without compromising the cycle time. Meanwhile, the proposed algorithm can provide efficient solutions within a reasonable computation time. Note to Practitioners-This paper is motivated by the problem of improving energy efficiency when routing cooperative robots in a manufacturing station. In current approaches for routing multi-robot stations, the cycle time and energy consumption are minimized separately. This paper focuses on the movement of the robot end-effector and its connected joint and suggests a new approach to minimize these two objectives jointly by proposing a new mathematical model. The resulting planning problem is computationally intractable. A customized metaheuristic algorithm is thus designed for efficiently solving this planning problem. Our meta-heuristic algorithm is integrated with the ϵ-constraint method to study the relationship between these two objectives. Simulation experiments suggest that this approach can reduce energy consumption considerably, for the shortest cycle time, compared with the current approaches. In future research, the movements of multi-joints will be investigated whereby 3-D collision-free trajectory planning will be considered.

Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)2022-2036
JournalIEEE Transactions on Automation Science and Engineering
Volume20
Issue number3
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 2023

Bibliographical note

Green Open Access added to TU Delft Institutional Repository 'You share, we take care!' - Taverne project https://www.openaccess.nl/en/you-share-we-take-care
Otherwise as indicated in the copyright section: the publisher is the copyright holder of this work and the author uses the Dutch legislation to make this work public.

Keywords

  • Collision avoidance
  • collision avoidance
  • energy consumption
  • Energy consumption
  • flexible time-space network model
  • Multi-robot systems
  • Planning
  • Robot kinematics
  • Robots
  • Routing
  • routing
  • Task analysis

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