Abstract
To solve the problem of lack of labor and decrease of skilled workers for agriculture and construction industry, we propose the method of creating work schedule for some industrial robots which perform their respective task simultaneously. For obtaining suboptimal feasible solution of the problem which includes two combinational problems, a layered genetic algorithm (LGA) is contrived. The LGA is able to solve the two combinational problems with relevance without increase of calculating load.
In this paper, we consider an agricultural production system, that is, hay transportation on slope by using two transporting robots and a loading robot. Work schedule for two transporting robots is optimized in the upper layer of the LGA, while work schedule of the loading robot is optimized in the lower layer which is constrained by the upper layer. The proposed method can create work schedule under not only single objective function such as work or work time, but also multi-objective function considering both of them. The schedule made by LGA under the objective function of work can reduce work by up to 56% compared to randomly scheduled situation. The effectiveness of this method is assured by comparing the results with the schedule made by a man with experience of hay transportation. As the quality of the schedule by this method is almost equal to that made by a man with experience, it is also possible to evaluate the ability of workers from the aspect of work efficiency. Finally, we discuss the human decision mechanism on scheduling by identifying the weighting factors for work and work time in multi-objective function.
