Application and research of the refilling process with Clip Type Manipulator

The Clip Type Manipulator, which includes moving unit and clip type manipulator unit, is designed for the Fast Medicine Dispensing System (FMDS). The modularization design technique is in favour of coordinated control among units and system maintenance. The permutation order of storage containers in the automatic refilling mode has been observed to have significant influence on the dispensing efficiency of the FMDS. Ant colony optimization (ACO) is used to simulate the picking route of the FMDS and optimized the picking order in practical operation. Test results show the picking route value simulated by ACO more than 43% compared with the commonly used picking route simulated by order-picking mode (OPM) in 20 picking points. According to the picking points resulting from simulation, theoretical optimization time calculated by ACO is over 50% better than that calculated by OPM. Operational test results show the optimization time of a route simulated by ACO had been optimized by more than 40% By increasing the picking point intensity, accelerating and decelerating processes existing in the short distance between picking points has a much more significant influence on optimized results.