Despite more than a decade of experimental work in multi-robot systems, important theoretical aspects of multi-robot coordination mechanisms have, to date, been largely untreated. To address this issue, we focus on the problem of multi-robot task allocation (MRTA). Most work on MRTA has been ad hoc and empirical, with many coordination architectures having been proposed and validated in a proof-of-concept fashion, but infrequently analyzed. With the goal of bringing objective grounding to this important area of research, we present a formal study of MRTA problems. A domain-independent taxonomy of MRTA problems is given, and it is shown how many such problems can be viewed as instances of other, well-studied, optimization problems. We demonstrate how relevant theory from operations research and combinatorial optimization can be used for analysis and greater understanding of existing approaches to task allocation, and show how the same theory can be used in the synthesis of new approaches.

/pdf/a-formal-analysis-and-taxonomy-of-task-allocation-in-multi-37udlnz144.pdf

A Formal Analysis and Taxonomy of Task Allocation in Multi-Robot Systems

http://www3.eng.cam.ac.uk/~hj231/Papers/rostering.pdf

Staff scheduling and rostering: A review of applications, methods and models

In the last four decades the container as an essential part of a unit-load-concept has achieved undoubted importance in international sea freight transportation. With ever increasing containerization the number of seaport container terminals and competition among them have become quite remarkable. Operations are nowadays unthinkable without effective and efficient use of information technology as well as appropriate optimization (operations research) methods. In this paper we describe and classify the main logistics processes and operations in container terminals and present a survey of methods for their optimization.

Container terminal operation and operations research — a classification and literature review

Nonlinear Programming: A Unified Approach

Big data analytics in logistics and supply chain management: Certain investigations for research and applications

We consider a supply chain in which a distributor procures from a producer a quantity of a fresh product, which has to undergo a long-distance transportation to reach the target market. During the transportation process, the distributor has to make an appropriate effort to preserve the freshness of the product, and his success in this respect impacts on both the quality and quantity of the product delivered to the market. The distributor has to determine his order quantity, level of freshness-keeping effort, and selling price, by taking into account the wholesale price of the producer, the cost of the freshness-keeping effort, the likely spoilage of the product during transportation, and the possible demand for the product in the market. The producer, on the other hand, has to determine the wholesale price based on its effect on the order quantity of the distributor. We develop a model to study this problem, and characterize each party's optimal decisions in both decentralized and centralized systems. We further develop an incentive scheme to facilitate coordination between the two parties. Computational results are reported to show the effects of freshness-keeping efforts.

Optimization and Coordination of Fresh Product Supply Chains with Freshness-Keeping Effort

We consider a supply chain in which a producer supplies a fresh product, through a third-party logistics (3PL) provider, to a distant market where a distributor purchases and sells it to end customers The product is perishable, both the quantity and quality of which may deteriorate during the process of transportation The market demand is random, sensitive to the selling price as well as the freshness of the product We derive the optimal decisions for the three supply chain members, including the 3PL provider's transportation fee, the producer's shipping quantity and wholesale price, and the distributor's purchasing quantity and retail price We find that the presence of the 3PL provider in the supply chain has a significant impact on its performance We propose an incentive scheme to coordinate the supply chain The scheme consists of two contracts, including a wholesale-market clearance (WMC) contract between the producer and the distributor, and a wholesale-price-discount sharing (WDS) contract between the producer and the 3PL provider We show that the proposed contracts can eliminate the two sources of “double marginalization” that exist in the three-tier supply chain, and induce the three parties to act in a coordinated way

https://isiarticles.com/bundles/Article/pre/pdf/670.pdf

Fresh- Product Supply Chain Management with Logistics Outsourcing

A genetic algorithm for scheduling staff of mixed skills under multi-criteria

A fast heuristic for the train scheduling problem

"Intuitionistic Fuzzy Information Aggregation: Theory and Applications" is the first book to provide a thorough and systematic introduction to intuitionistic fuzzy aggregation methods, the correlation, distance and similarity measures of intuitionistic fuzzy sets and various decision-making models and approaches based on the above-mentioned information processing tools. Through numerous practical examples and illustrations with tables and figures, it offers researchers and professionals in the fields of fuzzy mathematics, information fusion and decision analysis the most recent research findings, developed by the authors. Zeshui Xu is a Professor at the PLA University of Science and Technology, China. Xiaoqiang Cai is a Professor at the Chinese University of Hong Kong, China.