Development of a methodology to improve the performance of multi-robot pick & place applications: From simulation to experimentation

This paper deals with a new simulation tool for the improvement of multi-robot pick & place applications performance combining behavioral simulation of multiple robots and products flows. A contribution of the proposed work is to take into account in the simulation not only the scheduling rules of each robot, but also the robots collaborative aspect to ensure the desired overall performance for a given task (high-level programming). The transition from simulation to implementation of pick & place strategies is also an important issue tackled in this paper. By using a typical example consisting of comparing techniques to optimize the workflow, the utility of the simulation tool is proven. Experimental results validate the simulation results and demonstrate the interest of the developed methodology.