An initial task assignment method for tasks assignment and routing problem

This paper discusses an on-line Tasks Assignment and Routing Problem(TARP) for Autonomous Transportation Systems(ATSs) in manufacturing systems. The TARP results in a constrained version of the Pickup and Delivery Problem with Time Windows(PDPTW). As an approach to this problem, a cooperative algorithm with autonomous distributed agents has been proposed. The algorithm is able to plan deadlock-free routes even though the buffer capacity is small, but includes reformability at the point that computation time of that case increases drastically. We have proposed an initial task assignment method to reduce computational time on planning routes. This paper evaluates the proposed method, and results of evaluation show effectiveness of the proposed method.