A polychromatic sets theory based algorithm for the input/output scheduling problem in AS/RSs

This paper proposes a hybrid polychromatic sets theory based genetic algorithm (GA) for the input/output scheduling problem of automated storage and retrieval systems (AS/RSs). In order to overcome the drawbacks of precocious phenomena and lack of stability of the GA, a novel hybrid model through integration of genetic algorithm (GA) and polychromatic sets theory (PS) is proposed. During the solution process, polychromatic sets contour matric is used to assign input/output goods location reasonably to improve the quality of initial population. During the iterative process, simulate anneal algorithm (SA) is invoked to jump out of the local optimum to obtain a satisfactory solution. The experiment results showed that the hybrid PS-SA-GA genetic algorithm has obvious advantages in solving the input/output scheduling problems: the introduction of contour matrix constraint module can effectively improve the quality of initial population; the simulated annealing algorithm is invoked to reduce the possibility of premature convergence, and the global optimal solution can be obtained efficiently.