An algorithm for the assignment and scheduling of tasks in human-robot collaboration

Abstract

To face the challenge of increasing productivity while having flexibility, collaborative robots can help manufacturing or assembly systems. However, it is essential to assign and schedule tasks between humans and robots to provide a successful Human-Robot Collaboration while considering the agents’ potential and limitations. Thus, the main goal and contribution of this paper is to present an algorithm inspired in the GRASP metaheuristic for the assignment and scheduling of tasks in a collaborative workspace composed of a human worker and a collaborative robot. The algorithm is first tested with a fabricated data instance and then using data from six practical jobs from a published paper. The comparison with the dataset from the literature showed that the developed algorithm can provide good-quality solutions.