Modeling of reconfigurable material handling system consisting of multiple mobile robots

The modelling of reconfigurable material handling system (RMHS) plays an important role in the planning and operation of a reconfigurable manufacturing system (RMS). The reconfigurable mobile robots have great advantages to perform RMS´s material handling tasks in the volatile environment, where RMS layout will be frequently adjusted to fulfil the requirements of mutable production tasks. This paper proposes a new definition of RMHS, and presents a novel method based on graph theory and first-order logic calculus for configuration modelling of robot-based RMHS. The method is developed with full consideration of the reconfigurability of a single mobile robot at machine-level, and that of a system consisting of multiple mobile robots at system-level. The novel modelling method can facilitate selecting appropriate hardware and software modules to assemble a mobile robot, and also selecting appropriate mobile robots coupled with some cooperation strategy to construct a team for complex transportation task in the reconfiguration process of a RMHS.