Automatic Configuration of Mobile Conveyor Lines

Abstract

A conveyor belt is an efficient mode of transportation and has been widely utilized to move large quantities of objects in assembly lines, airports, etc. We propose a new conveyor system called mobile conveyor lines that can autonomously configure itself to move objects to a given destination. This system is suitable for situations such as disaster areas in which it is difficult to set up a conveyor line manually. We analyze the reachability of a group of mobile conveyor belts and propose an algorithm to check the reachability of a given destination, as well as a method to generate a configuration to guide conveyor belts to connect themselves to reach the destination. Our experimental results show that our algorithms, together with a heuristic that biases the search towards the destination, can quickly generate configurations of conveyor belts for problems that require less than 20 conveyor belts.