Learning-enabled Flexible Job-shop Scheduling for Scalable Smart Manufacturing

In smart manufacturing systems (SMSs), flexible job-shop scheduling with transportation constraints (FJSPT) is essential to optimize solutions for maximizing productivity, considering production flexibility based on automated guided vehicles (AGVs). Recent developments in deep reinforcement learning (DRL)-based methods for FJSPT have encountered a scale generalization challenge. These methods underperform when applied to environment at scales different from their training set, resulting in low-quality solutions. To address this, we introduce a novel graph-based DRL method, named the Heterogeneous Graph Scheduler (HGS). Our method leverages locally extracted relational knowledge among operations, machines, and vehicle nodes for scheduling, with a graph-structured decision-making framework that reduces encoding complexity and enhances scale generalization. Our performance evaluation, conducted with benchmark datasets, reveals that the proposed method outperforms traditional dispatching rules, meta-heuristics, and existing DRL-based approaches in terms of makespan performance, even on large-scale instances that have not been experienced during training.

DeepWiTraffic: Low Cost WiFi-Based Traffic Monitoring System Using Deep Learning

A traffic monitoring system (TMS) is an integral part of Intelligent Transportation Systems (ITS) for traffic analysis and planning. This paper addresses the endemic cost issue of deploying a large number of TMSs to cover huge miles of two-lane rural highways (119,247 miles in U.S.). A low-cost and portable TMS called DeepWiTraffic based on COTs WiFi devices and deep learning is proposed. DeepWiTraffic enables accurate vehicle detection and classification by exploiting the unique WiFi Channel State Information (CSI) of passing vehicles. Spatial and temporal correlations of preprocessed CSI amplitude and phase data are identified and analyzed using deep learning to classify vehicles into five different types: motorcycle, passenger vehicle, SUV, pickup truck, and large truck. A large amount of CSI data of passing vehicles and the corresponding ground truth video data are collected for about 120 hours to validate the effectiveness of DeepWiTraffic. The results show that the average detection accuracy of 99.4%, and the average classification accuracy of 91.1% (Motorcycle: 97.2%, Passenger Car: 91.1%, SUV:83.8%, Pickup Truck: 83.3%, and Large Truck: 99.7%) are achieved at a very small cost of about $1,000.