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Main Authors: Liao, Yaxin, Cui, Qimei, Chen, Kwang-Cheng, Li, Xiong, Chen, Jinlian, Zhao, Xiyu, Tao, Xiaofeng, Zhang, Ping
Format: Preprint
Published: 2026
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Online Access:https://arxiv.org/abs/2603.23967
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author Liao, Yaxin
Cui, Qimei
Chen, Kwang-Cheng
Li, Xiong
Chen, Jinlian
Zhao, Xiyu
Tao, Xiaofeng
Zhang, Ping
author_facet Liao, Yaxin
Cui, Qimei
Chen, Kwang-Cheng
Li, Xiong
Chen, Jinlian
Zhao, Xiyu
Tao, Xiaofeng
Zhang, Ping
contents Achieving agile and reconfigurable production flows in smart factories depends on online multi-robot task assignment (MRTA), which requires online collision-free and congestion-free route scheduling of transportation multi-robot systems (T-MRS), e.g., collaborative automatic guided vehicles (AGVs). Due to the real-time operational requirements and dynamic interactions between T-MRS and production MRS, online scheduling under partial observability in dynamic factory environments remains a significant and under-explored challenge. This paper proposes a novel communication-enabled online scheduling framework that explicitly couples wireless machine-to-machine (M2M) networking with route scheduling, enabling AGVs to exchange intention information, e.g., planned routes, to overcome partial observations and assist complex computation of online scheduling. Specifically, we determine intelligent AGVs' intention and sensor data as new M2M traffic and tailor the retransmission-free multi-link transmission networking to meet real-time operation demands. This scheduling-oriented networking is then integrated with a simulated annealing-based MRTA scheme and a congestion-aware A*-based route scheduling method. The integrated communication and scheduling scheme allows AGVs to dynamically adjust collision-free and congestion-free routes with reduced computational overhead. Numerical experiments shows the impacts from wireless communication on the performance of T-MRS and suggest that the proposed integrated scheme significantly enhances scheduling efficiency compared to other baselines, even under high AGV load conditions and limited channel resources. Moreover, the results reveal that the scheduling-oriented wireless M2M communication design fundamentally differs from human-to-human communications, implying new technological opportunities in a wireless networked smart factory.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2603_23967
institution arXiv
publishDate 2026
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Wireless communication empowers online scheduling of partially-observable transportation multi-robot systems in a smart factory
Liao, Yaxin
Cui, Qimei
Chen, Kwang-Cheng
Li, Xiong
Chen, Jinlian
Zhao, Xiyu
Tao, Xiaofeng
Zhang, Ping
Machine Learning
Achieving agile and reconfigurable production flows in smart factories depends on online multi-robot task assignment (MRTA), which requires online collision-free and congestion-free route scheduling of transportation multi-robot systems (T-MRS), e.g., collaborative automatic guided vehicles (AGVs). Due to the real-time operational requirements and dynamic interactions between T-MRS and production MRS, online scheduling under partial observability in dynamic factory environments remains a significant and under-explored challenge. This paper proposes a novel communication-enabled online scheduling framework that explicitly couples wireless machine-to-machine (M2M) networking with route scheduling, enabling AGVs to exchange intention information, e.g., planned routes, to overcome partial observations and assist complex computation of online scheduling. Specifically, we determine intelligent AGVs' intention and sensor data as new M2M traffic and tailor the retransmission-free multi-link transmission networking to meet real-time operation demands. This scheduling-oriented networking is then integrated with a simulated annealing-based MRTA scheme and a congestion-aware A*-based route scheduling method. The integrated communication and scheduling scheme allows AGVs to dynamically adjust collision-free and congestion-free routes with reduced computational overhead. Numerical experiments shows the impacts from wireless communication on the performance of T-MRS and suggest that the proposed integrated scheme significantly enhances scheduling efficiency compared to other baselines, even under high AGV load conditions and limited channel resources. Moreover, the results reveal that the scheduling-oriented wireless M2M communication design fundamentally differs from human-to-human communications, implying new technological opportunities in a wireless networked smart factory.
title Wireless communication empowers online scheduling of partially-observable transportation multi-robot systems in a smart factory
topic Machine Learning
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2603.23967