A Study on human-robot collaborative service systems

Simulation based evaluation of AGVs operation in food service company

Abstract

This research focuses the restaurant industry which the labor productivity is relatively low. In an action for improving the productivity, AGV (Automated Guided Vehicle) transports food from kitchen to the customer (or area near the customer) in some restaurants. This paper proposes an efficient way of AGV operation. Rules of AGV running and battery charge with the goal of reducing total food retention time in the kitchen has been resolved by computer experiment utilizing multi-agent simulation. It was resulted that total food retention time could be reduced 3.5% for 7 days (2,036 to 1,965 min/day) and a maximum of 7.4% for a certain day (1,981 to 1,834 min/day) by changing battery charging rule which avoid heading for automatic charging while dishes being transported remained. By operating AGV efficiently based on the simulation results, it could be done that (1) reduction of labor quantity, (2) increase in customer service time by working staff, and (3) speeding up of food service. Raising customer satisfaction and eliminating the factors of customer dissatisfaction would be also important initiatives in the service industry.