Abstract
This paper proposes a planning and scheduling method for rearrangement of floor layouts (RAFL)-a search problem involving multi-path planning and resource allocation. RAFL consists of pre- and postchanged layouts of objects, workers and a work time limit. The goal in solving RAFL is to find a pair of a rearrangement plan - a set of paths for each object - and its schedule - an assignment of actions for each worker in each turn in order to make objects move along the planned paths. RAFL is difficult to find even a feasible solution due to frequent collision and scrambles for workers among objects. The proposed method represents the problem by a set of various, complex constraints necessary to planning and scheduling, and finds a solution efficiently by using user’s advice as both constraints and heuristics for pruning wasteful search space and weighting significant values and variables. Experimental results showed user’s advice considerably reduced the time to solve and enabled to get a feasible solution within practical time.
