Optimized coordination and scheduling of traffic evolving on complex guidepath networks

在许多当代工业和分配应用中，材料处理操作由机器人代理的车队（例如，移动的机器人、在高架单轨系统上循环的车辆、或龙门起重机的复杂阵列）在导轨网络上循环，该导轨网络或者由材料处理系统的物理结构限定（如在单轨和龙门起重机系统的情况下），或者在外部限定以努力将相应的交通与周围环境分离。随着这些材料处理系统的规模和操作复杂性的增加，迫切需要一个更系统的方法，将支持方便和安全的交通旅行社，同时考虑到所有的约束和限制，所产生的约束和限制，从基本的guidpath网络的约束性质和有限的机动能力的代理本身。此外，在量子计算系统的操作环境中也会出现类似的流量动态和控制需求。在这种情况下，电离的原子在这些系统中，携带要处理的基本信息的量子比特（或量子比特）必须被传输到不同的位置，以便彼此交互或与某些外部场交互，并且这种传输必须通过仔细定义和分配的隧道网络来执行。（更正式地称为离子阱）;这些隧道和它们对行进的量子比特的相应分配旨在通过将量子比特与它们的周围环境隔离来保护处理的信息，防止它们之间的意外相互作用。拟议研究计划的成功完成将为上述应用环境中发生的流量的有效和高效的实时协调和调度开发一套完整的方法。特别是，预期的结果将使安全，有序和方便的旅行系统代理在面对所有的基础操作的复杂性，这将进一步导致更高水平的灵活性，鲁棒性和生产力为这些操作。此外，该项目还将雇用一名研究生，他将进行博士研究。论文中提出的一组问题，并获得的结果将在量子计算机的高保真模拟器上实现，该模拟器由格鲁吉亚技术研究所的一组研究人员开发，并与PI和上述研究生积极合作。此外，PI将利用他与学院-工业理事会在物料搬运教育的从属关系，以促进所获得的成果，以相关的物料搬运industries.To有效地满足在前面的段落中概述的研究目标，拟议的研究计划将大大补充和扩展当前的理论，实时协调和调度的复杂交通系统。在所提出的建模和分析范式中，所考虑的交通管理问题将表示为顺序资源分配问题，其中运行过程是由系统代理执行的行程，分配的资源是执行这些行程所需的各个部分的guidpath网络。这种分配必须控制逻辑的正确性，在考虑的问题的上下文中，转换为建立安全性和活性的基础流量，也为方便起见，这转换为延迟最小化和高吞吐量的请求传输。所有这些要求将通过就业，扩展和整合的想法和结果来自（i）复杂的资源分配系统的逻辑控制，（ii）（组合）调度理论，和（iii）这些结果嵌入在一个新的模型预测控制框架。

In many contemporary industrial and distribution applications, the material handling operations are executed automatically by fleet of robotized agents (e.g., mobile robots, vehicles circulating on elevated monorail systems, or complex arrays of gantry cranes) circulating over a guidepath network that is defined either by the physical structure of the material handling system (as in the case of the monorail and the gantry crane systems), or defined externally in an effort to separate the corresponding traffic from the surrounding environment. As these material handling systems increase in scale and operational complexity, there is an emergent need for a more systematic methodology that will support expedient and safe traffic for the traveling agents, while taking into consideration all the constraints and limitations that arise from the constricted nature of the underlying guidepath network and of the limited maneuvering capabilities of the agents themselves. Furthermore, similar traffic dynamics and control needs arise in the operational context of quantum computing systems. In that case, the ionized atoms (or qubits) that carry the elementary information to be processed in those systems, must be transported to different locations in order to interact with each other or with certain external fields, and this transport must be performed through a network of carefully defined and allocated tunnels (more formally known as ion traps); these tunnels and the corresponding allocation of them to the traveling qubits intends to protect the processed information by isolating the qubits from their surrounding environment and preventing unintended interaction among them. The successful completion of the proposed research program will develop a complete methodology for effective and efficient real-time coordination and scheduling of the traffic that takes place in the aforementioned application environments. In particular, the expected results will enable safe, orderly and expedient traveling for the system agents in the face of all the complexity of the underlying operations, which will further lead to higher levels of flexibility, robustness and productivity for these operations. Furthermore, the project will employ a graduate student who will carry out a Ph.D. thesis on the proposed set of problems, and the obtained results will be implemented on a high-fidelity simulator of a quantum computer that is developed by a group of researchers at the Georgia Tech Research Institute and have an active collaboration with the PI and the aforementioned graduate student. In addition, the PI will leverage his affiliation with the College-Industry Council on Material Handling Education in order to promote the obtained results to the relevant material handling industries.To effectively meet the research objectives outlined in the previous paragraph, the proposed research program will substantially complement and extend the current theory on the real-time coordination and scheduling of complex traffic systems. In the proposed modeling and analysis paradigm, the considered traffic management problems will be represented as sequential resource allocation problems where the running processes are the trips executed by the system agents, and the allocated resources are the various segments of the guidepath network that are needed for the execution of these trips. This allocation must be controlled for logical correctness, that in the considered problem context translates to the establishment of safety and liveness for the underlying traffic, and also for expediency, which translates to delay minimization and high throughput for the requested transports. All these requirements will be met through the employment, extension and integration of ideas and results coming from the areas of (i) logical control of complex resource allocation systems, (ii) (combinatorial) scheduling theory, and (iii) the embedding of these results in a novel model predictive control framework.