Evaluating the influence of planning horizons on the performance of multi-robot systems

This research evaluates the effects of planning horizons on the performance of multi-robot workstations. Previous studies of planning horizons impact concentrated on flexible manufacturing systems (FMS) characterized by setup times between tasks. Multi-robot systems have negligible setup times and therefore, respond differently to changes in planning horizons. The effects of planning horizons were evaluated for different system parameters both in simulation and in hardware. Results indicate that planning horizons improve system throughput only when there are episodic epochs of large numbers of identical products