Application and research of the refilling process with Clip Type Manipulator

The Clip Type Manipulator, which includes moving unit and clip type manipulator unit, is designed for the Fast Medicine Dispensing System (FMDS). The modularization design technique is in favour of coordinated control among units and system maintenance. The permutation order of storage containers in the automatic refilling mode has been observed to have significant influence on the dispensing efficiency of the FMDS. Ant colony optimization (ACO) is used to simulate the picking route of the FMDS and optimized the picking order in practical operation. Test results show the picking route value simulated by ACO more than 43% compared with the commonly used picking route simulated by order-picking mode (OPM) in 20 picking points. According to the picking points resulting from simulation, theoretical optimization time calculated by ACO is over 50% better than that calculated by OPM. Operational test results show the optimization time of a route simulated by ACO had been optimized by more than 40% By increasing the picking point intensity, accelerating and decelerating processes existing in the short distance between picking points has a much more significant influence on optimized results.

[1]  Adel M. Alimi,et al.  A comparative study of the improvement of performance using a PSO modified by ACO applied to TSP , 2014, Appl. Soft Comput..

[2]  Francesco Amato,et al.  An approach to control automated warehouse systems , 2005 .

[3]  Young-Min Kim,et al.  Ant colony based self-adaptive energy saving routing for energy efficient Internet , 2012, Comput. Networks.

[4]  Zhilu Wu,et al.  Ant colony optimization algorithm with mutation mechanism and its applications , 2010, Expert Syst. Appl..

[5]  Nadia Nedjah,et al.  Congestion-aware ant colony based routing algorithms for efficient application execution on Network-on-Chip platform , 2013, Expert Syst. Appl..

[6]  Verena Schmid,et al.  Metaheuristics for order batching and sequencing in manual order picking systems , 2013, Comput. Ind. Eng..

[7]  Wang Wei,et al.  Application and Research of the Clip Type Manipulator , 2016 .

[8]  Leishan Zhou,et al.  Multi-route railroad blocking problem by improved model and ant colony algorithm in real world , 2011, Comput. Ind. Eng..

[9]  Wei Wang,et al.  Modeling and Simulation of the Automated Pharmacy System , 2008, 2008 International Conference on Intelligent Computation Technology and Automation (ICICTA).

[10]  Weiming Shen,et al.  Swarm behavior control of mobile multi-robots with wireless sensor networks , 2011, J. Netw. Comput. Appl..

[11]  Francisco Herrera,et al.  Analysis of the efficacy of a Two-Stage methodology for ant colony optimization: Case of study with TSP and QAP , 2010, Expert Syst. Appl..

[12]  Ellen Balka,et al.  Who is in charge of patient safety? Work practice, work processes and utopian views of automatic drug dispensing systems , 2007, Int. J. Medical Informatics.

[13]  D. Wang,et al.  Improved multi-objective ant colony optimization algorithm and its application in complex reasoning , 2013, Chinese Journal of Mechanical Engineering.

[14]  Orhan Engin,et al.  Investigation of Ant System parameter interactions by using design of experiments for job-shop scheduling problems , 2009, Comput. Ind. Eng..

[15]  Luca Maria Gambardella,et al.  Ant colony system: a cooperative learning approach to the traveling salesman problem , 1997, IEEE Trans. Evol. Comput..

[16]  Keld Helsgaun,et al.  An effective implementation of the Lin-Kernighan traveling salesman heuristic , 2000, Eur. J. Oper. Res..

[17]  K. Cheng,et al.  Implementing a bar-code assisted medication administration system: Effects on the dispensing process and user perceptions , 2014, Int. J. Medical Informatics.

[18]  Yong Xie,et al.  An ant colony optimization routing algorithm for two order pickers with congestion consideration , 2013, Comput. Ind. Eng..

[19]  Jari Saarinen,et al.  A fast simulated annealing method for batching precedence-constrained customer orders in a warehouse , 2014, Eur. J. Oper. Res..

[20]  Sebastian Henn,et al.  Algorithms for on-line order batching in an order picking warehouse , 2012, Comput. Oper. Res..

[21]  Marco Dorigo,et al.  Ant system: optimization by a colony of cooperating agents , 1996, IEEE Trans. Syst. Man Cybern. Part B.

[22]  Zhongyang Zheng,et al.  Research Advance in Swarm Robotics , 2013 .

[23]  Zheng Xin,et al.  Research on Order Picking Optimization Problem of Automated Warehouse , 2007 .

[24]  Zuren Feng,et al.  Multi-satellite control resource scheduling based on ant colony optimization , 2014, Expert Syst. Appl..

[25]  L. L. Chen,et al.  Evaluating the Impact of Drug Dispensing Systems on the Safety and Efficacy in a Singapore Outpatient Pharmacy. , 2014, Value in health : the journal of the International Society for Pharmacoeconomics and Outcomes Research.

[26]  Majid Yousefikhoshbakht,et al.  An Efficient Solution for the VRP by Using a Hybrid Elite Ant System , 2014, Int. J. Comput. Commun. Control.

[27]  G. Clarke,et al.  Scheduling of Vehicles from a Central Depot to a Number of Delivery Points , 1964 .

[28]  Suphakant Phimoltares,et al.  Combining new Fast Opposite Gradient Search with Ant Colony Optimization for solving travelling salesman problem , 2014, Eng. Appl. Artif. Intell..

[29]  Aybars Ugur,et al.  An interactive simulation and analysis software for solving TSP using Ant Colony Optimization algorithms , 2009, Adv. Eng. Softw..