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Article
Publication date: 7 March 2023

Preeti Godabole and Girish Bhole

The main purpose of the paper is timing analysis of mixed critical applications on the multicore system to identify an efficient task scheduling mechanism to achieve three main…

Abstract

Purpose

The main purpose of the paper is timing analysis of mixed critical applications on the multicore system to identify an efficient task scheduling mechanism to achieve three main objectives improving schedulability, achieving reliability and minimizing the number of cores used. The rise in transient faults in embedded systems due to the use of low-cost processors has led to the use of fault-tolerant scheduling and mapping techniques.

Design/methodology/approach

The paper opted for a simulation-based study. The simulation of mixed critical applications, like air traffic control systems and synthetic workloads, is carried out using a litmus-real time testbed on an Ubuntu machine. The heuristic algorithms for task allocation based on utilization factors and task criticalities are proposed for partitioned approaches with multiple objectives.

Findings

Both partitioned earliest deadline first (EDF) with the utilization-based heuristic and EDF-virtual deadline (VD) with a criticality-based heuristic for allocation works well, as it schedules the air traffic system with a 98% success ratio (SR) using only three processor cores with transient faults being handled by the active backup of the tasks. With synthetic task loads, the proposed criticality-based heuristic works well with EDF-VD, as the SR is 94%. The validation of the proposed heuristic is done with a global and partitioned approach of scheduling, considering active backups to make the system reliable. There is an improvement in SR by 11% as compared to the global approach and a 17% improvement in comparison with the partitioned fixed-priority approach with only three processor cores being used.

Research limitations/implications

The simulations of mixed critical tasks are carried out on a real-time kernel based on Linux and are generalizable in Linux-based environments.

Practical implications

The rise in transient faults in embedded systems due to the use of low-cost processors has led to the use of fault-tolerant scheduling and mapping techniques.

Originality/value

This paper fulfills an identified need to have multi-objective task scheduling in a mixed critical system. The timing analysis helps to identify performance risks and assess alternative architectures used to achieve reliability in terms of transient faults.

Details

International Journal of Pervasive Computing and Communications, vol. 20 no. 1
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 1742-7371

Keywords

Article
Publication date: 5 October 2022

Sophiya Shiekh, Mohammad Shahid, Manas Sambare, Raza Abbas Haidri and Dileep Kumar Yadav

Cloud computing gives several on-demand infrastructural services by dynamically pooling heterogeneous resources to cater to users’ applications. The task scheduling needs to be…

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Abstract

Purpose

Cloud computing gives several on-demand infrastructural services by dynamically pooling heterogeneous resources to cater to users’ applications. The task scheduling needs to be done optimally to achieve proficient results in a cloud computing environment. While satisfying the user’s requirements in a cloud environment, scheduling has been proven an NP-hard problem. Therefore, it leaves scope to develop new allocation models for the problem. The aim of the study is to develop load balancing method to maximize the resource utilization in cloud environment.

Design/methodology/approach

In this paper, the parallelized task allocation with load balancing (PTAL) hybrid heuristic is proposed for jobs coming from various users. These jobs are allocated on the resources one by one in a parallelized manner as they arrive in the cloud system. The novel algorithm works in three phases: parallelization, task allocation and task reallocation. The proposed model is designed for efficient task allocation, reallocation of resources and adequate load balancing to achieve better quality of service (QoS) results.

Findings

The acquired empirical results show that PTAL performs better than other scheduling strategies under various cases for different QoS parameters under study.

Originality/value

The outcome has been examined for the real data set to evaluate it with different state-of-the-art heuristics having comparable objective parameters.

Details

International Journal of Pervasive Computing and Communications, vol. 19 no. 5
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 1742-7371

Keywords

Article
Publication date: 22 September 2020

Seenu N., Kuppan Chetty R.M., Ramya M.M. and Mukund Nilakantan Janardhanan

This paper aims to present a concise review on the variant state-of-the-art dynamic task allocation strategies. It presents a thorough discussion about the existing dynamic task

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Abstract

Purpose

This paper aims to present a concise review on the variant state-of-the-art dynamic task allocation strategies. It presents a thorough discussion about the existing dynamic task allocation strategies mainly with respect to the problem application, constraints, objective functions and uncertainty handling methods.

Design/methodology/approach

This paper briefs the introduction of multi-robot dynamic task allocation problem and discloses the challenges that exist in real-world dynamic task allocation problems. Numerous task allocation strategies are discussed in this paper, and it establishes the characteristics features between them in a qualitative manner. This paper also exhibits the existing research gaps and conducive future research directions in dynamic task allocation for multiple mobile robot systems.

Findings

This paper concerns the objective functions, robustness, task allocation time, completion time, and task reallocation feature for performance analysis of different task allocation strategies. It prescribes suitable real-world applications for variant task allocation strategies and identifies the challenges to be resolved in multi-robot task allocation strategies.

Originality/value

This paper provides a comprehensive review of dynamic task allocation strategies and incites the salient research directions to the researchers in multi-robot dynamic task allocation problems. This paper aims to summarize the latest approaches in the application of exploration problems.

Details

Industrial Robot: the international journal of robotics research and application, vol. 47 no. 6
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 0143-991X

Keywords

Article
Publication date: 5 January 2021

Yandong Liu, Dong Han, Lujia Wang and Cheng-Zhong Xu

With the rapid development of e-commerce, logistics demand is increasing day by day. The modern warehousing with a multi-agent system as the core comes into being. This paper aims…

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Abstract

Purpose

With the rapid development of e-commerce, logistics demand is increasing day by day. The modern warehousing with a multi-agent system as the core comes into being. This paper aims to study the task allocation and path-planning (TAPP) problem as required by the multi-agent warehouse system.

Design/methodology/approach

The TAPP problem targets to minimize the makespan by allocating tasks to the agents and planning collision-free paths for the agents. This paper presents the Hierarchical Genetic Highways Algorithm (HGHA), a hierarchical algorithm combining optimization and multi-agent path-finding (MAPF). The top-level is the genetic algorithm (GA), allocating tasks to agents in an optimized way. The lower level is the so-called highways local repair (HLR) process, avoiding the collisions by local repairment if and only if conflicts arise.

Findings

Experiments demonstrate that HGHA performs faster and more efficient for the warehouse scenario than max multi-flow. This paper also applies HGHA to TAPP instances with a hundred agents and a thousand storage locations in a customized warehouse simulation platform with MultiBots.

Originality/value

This paper formulates the multi-agent warehousing distribution problem, TAPP. The HGHA based on hierarchical architecture solves the TAPP accurately and quickly. Verifying the HGHA by the large-scale multi-agent simulation platform MultiBots.

Details

Assembly Automation, vol. 41 no. 2
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 0144-5154

Keywords

Article
Publication date: 3 March 2020

Xin Yang and Nazanin Rahmani

In the past, with the development of the internet of things (IoT), this paper aims to consider fog computing (FC) as an efficient accompaniment to the cloud to control the IoT’s…

Abstract

Purpose

In the past, with the development of the internet of things (IoT), this paper aims to consider fog computing (FC) as an efficient accompaniment to the cloud to control the IoT’s information and relation requirements. Wholly, FC is placed carefully around the IoT systems/sensors and develops cloud-based computing, memory and networking devices. Fog shares many similarities with the cloud, but the only difference between them is its location, in which fog devices are very close to end-users to process and respond to the client in less time. On the other hand, this system is useful for real-time flowing programs, sensor systems, and IoT that need high speed and reliable internet connectivity. However, there are many applications such as remote healthcare and medical cyber-physical systems, where low latency is needed. To reduce the latency of FC, the task scheduler plays a vital role. The task scheduling means to devote the task to fog resources in an efficient way. Yet, according to the findings, in spite of the preference of task scheduling techniques in the FC, there is not any review and research in this case. So, this paper offers systematic literature research about the available task scheduling techniques. In addition, the advantages and disadvantages associated with different task scheduling processes are considered, and the main challenges of them are addressed to design a more efficient task scheduler in the future. Additionally, according to the seen facts, future instructions are provided for these studies.

Design/methodology/approach

The paper complies with the methodological requirements of systematic literature reviews (SLR). The present paper investigates the newest systems and studies their practical techniques in detail. The applications of task scheduling mechanisms in FC have been categorized into two major groups, including heuristic and meta-heuristic.

Findings

Particularly, the replies to the project problem analyzed task scheduling are principal aim, present problems, project terminologies, methods and approaches in the fog settings. The authors tried to design his systematic discussion as precisely as possible. However, it might have still endured various confidence risks.

Research limitations/implications

This study aimed to be comprehensive but there were some limitations. First, the usage of affair scheduling in fog settings are contained in many places such as editorial notes, academic publications, technical writings, Web pages and so on. The published papers in national magazines were omitted. Also, the papers with the purpose of a special task scheduling issue, which probably consider other subjects rather than affair planning issue are omitted. So, in the competence of this study, this systematic analysis must be considered as the studies published in the central international FC journals. Second, the given issues might not have considered the general task scheduling area, which points to the possibility of describing more related questions that could be described. Third, research and publication bias: five confident electronic databases were chosen based on past study experiments. Finally, the numbers show that these five electronic databases must suggest the most related and reliable projects. Yet, selecting all main performing projects has not been confirmed. Probably some effective projects were omitted throughout the processes in Section 3. Different from the conclusion, changing from the search string to the information extraction exists, and the authors tried to exclude this by satisfying the source in central projects.

Practical implications

The results of this survey will be valuable for academicians, and it can provide visions into future research areas in this domain. Moreover, the disadvantages and advantages of the above systems have been studied, and their key issues have been emphasized to develop a more effective task scheduling mechanisms in the FC mechanisms.

Originality/value

It is useful to show the authors the state-of-the-art in the fog task scheduling area. The consequences of this project make researchers provide a more effective task planning approach in fog settings.

Details

Kybernetes, vol. 50 no. 1
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 0368-492X

Keywords

Article
Publication date: 26 February 2024

Xiaohui Jia, Chunrui Tang, Xiangbo Zhang and Jinyue Liu

This study aims to propose an efficient dual-robot task collaboration strategy to address the issue of low work efficiency and inability to meet the production needs of a single…

Abstract

Purpose

This study aims to propose an efficient dual-robot task collaboration strategy to address the issue of low work efficiency and inability to meet the production needs of a single robot during construction operations.

Design/methodology/approach

A hybrid task allocation method based on integer programming and auction algorithms, with the aim of achieving a balanced workload between two robots has been proposed. In addition, while ensuring reasonable workload allocation between the two robots, an improved dual ant colony algorithm was used to solve the dual traveling salesman problem, and the global path planning of the two robots was determined, resulting in an efficient and collision-free path for the dual robots to operate. Meanwhile, an improved fast Random tree rapidly-exploring random tree algorithm is introduced as a local obstacle avoidance strategy.

Findings

The proposed method combines randomization and iteration techniques to achieve an efficient task allocation strategy for two robots, ensuring the relative optimal global path of the two robots in cooperation and solving complex local obstacle avoidance problems.

Originality/value

This method is applied to the scene of steel bar tying in construction work, with the workload allocation and collaborative work between two robots as evaluation indicators. The experimental results show that this method can efficiently complete the steel bar banding operation, effectively reduce the interference between the two robots and minimize the interference of obstacles in the environment.

Details

Industrial Robot: the international journal of robotics research and application, vol. 51 no. 3
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 0143-991X

Keywords

Article
Publication date: 2 August 2011

Xuan Du, Zongbin Li and Song Wang

The purpose of this paper is to realize the integrated optimization of process planning and scheduling in printed circuit board assembly (PCBA).

Abstract

Purpose

The purpose of this paper is to realize the integrated optimization of process planning and scheduling in printed circuit board assembly (PCBA).

Design/methodology/approach

Logical and numerical contour matrix is used to describe the constituent of component and machine for different PCBA processes on the basis of polychromatic sets (PS) theory, and a PS model of PCBA is built. A hybrid genetic algorithm (GA) is developed to optimize the component allocation, PCB assignment and assembly sequence simultaneously.

Findings

Integration of PCBA process planning and scheduling (PCBAPPS) can bridge the gap between design and manufacturing to guarantee the assembly quality and improve the production efficiency. However, PCBAPPS have to search for the optimal result in their own vast solution space. They are complex combinatorial optimization problems. The optimization of PCBAPPS constructs a unified solution space which includes two sub‐solution space stated above. In this paper, dynamic optimization of PCBAPPS is implemented and the solution efficiency is improved.

Originality/value

PS model holds unified standard form on the basis of logical contour and numerical matrix. It is adopted to describe the static structure and dynamic characteristic of PCBA system and combine with GA to solve the integrated optimization problem of PCBAPPS effectively and dynamically.

Details

Assembly Automation, vol. 31 no. 3
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 0144-5154

Keywords

Article
Publication date: 31 August 2021

Ibrahim Al-Shourbaji and Waleed Zogaan

The human resource (HR) allocation problem is one of the critical dimensions of the project management process. Due to this nature of the problem, researchers are continually…

Abstract

Purpose

The human resource (HR) allocation problem is one of the critical dimensions of the project management process. Due to this nature of the problem, researchers are continually optimizing one or more critical scheduling and allocation challenges in different ways. This study aims to optimize two goals, increasing customer satisfaction and reducing costs using the imperialist competitive algorithm.

Design/methodology/approach

Cloud-based e-commerce applications are preferred to conventional systems because they can save money in many areas, including resource use, running expenses, capital costs, maintenance and operation costs. In web applications, its core functionality of performance enhancement and automated device recovery is important. HR knowledge, expertise and competencies are becoming increasingly valuable carriers for organizational competitive advantage. As a result, HR management is becoming more relevant, as it seeks to channel all of the workers’ energy into meeting the organizational strategic objectives. The allocation of resources to maximize benefit or minimize cost is known as the resource allocation problem. Since discovering solutions in polynomial time is complicated, HR allocation in cloud-based e-commerce is an Nondeterministic Polynomial time (NP)-hard problem. In this paper, to promote the respective strengths and minimize the weaknesses, the imperialist competitive algorithm is suggested to solve these issues. The imperialist competitive algorithm is tested by comparing it to the literature’s novel algorithms using a simulation.

Findings

Empirical outcomes have illustrated that the suggested hybrid method achieves higher performance in discovering the appropriate HR allocation than some modern techniques.

Practical implications

The paper presents a useful method for improving HR allocation methods. The MATLAB-based simulation results have indicated that costs and waiting time have been improved compared to other algorithms, which cause the high application of this method in practical projects.

Originality/value

The main novelty of this paper is using an imperialist competitive algorithm for finding the best solution to the HR allocation problem in cloud-based e-commerce.

Details

Kybernetes, vol. 51 no. 6
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 0368-492X

Keywords

Article
Publication date: 18 April 2016

Masoud Nosrati and Ronak Karimi

This paper aims to provide a method for media resource allocation in Cloud systems for supporting green computing policies, as well as attempting to improve the overall…

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Abstract

Purpose

This paper aims to provide a method for media resource allocation in Cloud systems for supporting green computing policies, as well as attempting to improve the overall performance of system by optimizing the communication latencies.

Design/methodology/approach

A common method for resource allocation is using resource agent that takes the budgets/prices of applicants/resources and creates a probability matrix of allocation according to the policies of system. Two general policies for optimization are latency optimization and green computing. Presented heuristic for latencies is so that the average latencies of communication between applicant and resource are measured, and they will affect the next decision. For gaining green computing, it is attempted to consolidate the allocated resources on smaller number of physical machines. So calculation formula of the price of each resource is modified to decrease the probability of allocating the resources on the machine with least allocated resources.

Findings

Results of proposed method indicates its success in both green computing and improving the performance. Experiments show decreasing 21.4 per cent of response time simultaneously with increasing tasks in the tested range. The maximum and minimum of saved energy is acceptable and reported as 79.2 and 16.8 per cent.

Research limitations/implications

Like other centralized solutions, the proposed method suffers from the limitations of centralized resource agent, like bottle neck. But the implementation of distributed resource agent is postponed to future work.

Originality/value

Proposed method presents heuristics for improving the performance and gaining green computing. The key feature is formulating all the details and considering pitch variables for controlling the policies of system.

Details

International Journal of Web Information Systems, vol. 12 no. 1
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 1744-0084

Keywords

Article
Publication date: 13 February 2024

José Nogueira da Mata Filho, Antonio Celio Pereira de Mesquita, Fernando Teixeira Mendes Abrahão and Guilherme C. Rocha

This paper aims to explore the optimization process involved in the aircraft maintenance allocation and packing problem. The aircraft industry misses a part of the optimization…

Abstract

Purpose

This paper aims to explore the optimization process involved in the aircraft maintenance allocation and packing problem. The aircraft industry misses a part of the optimization potential while developing maintenance plans. This research provides the modeling foundation for the missing part considering the failure behavior of components, costs involved with all maintenance tasks and opportunity costs.

Design/methodology/approach

The study models the cost-effectiveness of support against the availability to come up with an optimization problem. The mathematical problem was solved with an exact algorithm. Experiments were performed with real field and synthetically generated data, to validate the correctness of the model and its potential to provide more accurate and better engineered maintenance plans.

Findings

The solution procedure provided excellent results by enhancing the overall arrangement of the tasks, resulting in higher availability rates and a substantial decrease in total maintenance costs. In terms of situational awareness, it provides the user with the flexibility to better manage resource constraints while still achieving optimal results.

Originality/value

This is an innovative research providing a state-of-the-art mathematical model and an algorithm for efficiently solving a task allocation and packing problem by incorporating components’ due flight time, failure probability, task relationships, smart allocation of common preparation tasks, operational profile and resource limitations.

Details

Journal of Quality in Maintenance Engineering, vol. 30 no. 1
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 1355-2511

Keywords

1 – 10 of over 1000