Mathematical models and heuristic algorithms for pallet building problems with practical constraints
研究了实际机器人应用中托盘装载物品的问题，物品需按家族分组、水平分层且同层同类型物品连续可见，提出了数学模型及启发式、元启发式和数学启发式算法，并通过真实实例测试了性能。
Abstract In the pallet building problem, we aim at loading a given set of items into one or more pallets, by satisfying specific constraints and minimizing the number of pallets used. In this paper, we address a practical case of this problem that originates from a real-world robotized application, subject to some non-trivial operational constraints. In practice, items are grouped into families and must be packed into horizontal layers. To facilitate loading/unloading operations, items of the same type packed into the same layer should be contiguous and at least one of them should be visible from the outside. We present a formal mathematical description for layer and pallet creation subproblems and then we propose heuristic, metaheuristic, matheuristic algorithms to solve the overall problem. The performance of the algorithms is assessed through extensive computational tests on real-world instances.