A Heuristic for Efficient Coordination of Multiple Heterogeneous Mobile Robots Considering Workload Balance

The letter deals with a path planning problem that commonly arises in many applications involving multiple heterogeneous robots called a Multiple Depot Heterogeneous Traveling Salesman Problem (MDHTSP). Specifically, the authors seek to provide good quality of feasible solutions for a path planning problem for a given set of structurally heterogeneous mobile robots located in distinctive depots and a set of targets to visit while minimizing the maximum travel cost (min-max). A solution for MDHTSP with min-max objectives is in great demand for many applications, such as transportation and surveillance, because it is directly related to a significant reduction in the mission completion time. However, no reliable algorithm running in a reasonable computation time has been published for this specific problem. As an extension of our preliminary research on two heterogeneous robots, this letter presents a heuristic approach based on a primal-dual technique for the problem while focusing on the target assignment. The computational results of the implementation verify that the proposed algorithm produces a good quality of feasible solution within a relatively short computation time.

[1]  Kaarthik Sundar,et al.  A Two-Stage Approach for Routing Multiple Unmanned Aerial Vehicles with Stochastic Fuel Consumption , 2017, Sensors.

[2]  Stephen L. Smith,et al.  Heterogeneous Task Allocation and Sequencing via Decentralized Large Neighborhood Search , 2017, Unmanned Syst..

[3]  Konstantinos Kanistras,et al.  A survey of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) for traffic monitoring , 2013, 2013 International Conference on Unmanned Aircraft Systems (ICUAS).

[4]  Manish Kumar,et al.  An ant colony optimization technique for solving min-max Multi-Depot Vehicle Routing Problem , 2013, Swarm Evol. Comput..

[5]  Timothy W. McLain,et al.  Cooperative forest fire surveillance using a team of small unmanned air vehicles , 2006, Int. J. Syst. Sci..

[6]  L. Shepp,et al.  OPTIMAL PATHS FOR A CAR THAT GOES BOTH FORWARDS AND BACKWARDS , 1990 .

[7]  Han-Lim Choi,et al.  Min-Max Tours and Paths for Task Allocation to Heterogeneous Agents , 2020, IEEE Transactions on Control of Network Systems.

[8]  Sivakumar Rathinam,et al.  Min-Max Path Planning Algorithms for Heterogeneous, Autonomous Underwater Vehicles , 2018, 2018 IEEE/OES Autonomous Underwater Vehicle Workshop (AUV).

[9]  Youmin Zhang,et al.  A survey on technologies for automatic forest fire monitoring, detection, and fighting using unmanned aerial vehicles and remote sensing techniques , 2015 .

[10]  Robin R. Murphy,et al.  Mobile robots in mine rescue and recovery , 2009, IEEE Robotics & Automation Magazine.

[11]  David W. Casbeer,et al.  Market Approach to Length Constrained Min-Max Multiple Depot Multiple Traveling Salesman Problem , 2020, 2020 American Control Conference (ACC).

[12]  Steven G. Hall,et al.  Using Drones in Agriculture: Unmanned Aerial Systems for Agricultural Remote Sensing Applications , 2014 .

[13]  Yan Lin,et al.  Memetic algorithm based on sequential variable neighborhood descent for the minmax multiple traveling salesman problem , 2017, Comput. Ind. Eng..

[14]  Richard M. Karp,et al.  Reducibility Among Combinatorial Problems , 1972, 50 Years of Integer Programming.

[15]  Tania Prinsloo,et al.  The influence of drone monitoring on crop health and harvest size , 2017, 2017 1st International Conference on Next Generation Computing Applications (NextComp).

[16]  Hao Wang,et al.  Energy-Efficient Min-Max Planning of Heterogeneous Tasks with Multiple UAVs , 2018, 2018 IEEE 24th International Conference on Parallel and Distributed Systems (ICPADS).

[17]  Sivakumar Rathinam,et al.  Primal-Dual 2-Approximation Algorithm for the Monotonic Multiple Depot Heterogeneous Traveling Salesman Problem , 2020, SWAT.

[18]  Paul Ozog,et al.  Long‐term Mapping Techniques for Ship Hull Inspection and Surveillance using an Autonomous Underwater Vehicle , 2016, J. Field Robotics.

[19]  Woojin Chung,et al.  A Heuristic for Task Allocation and Routing of Heterogeneous Robots while Minimizing Maximum Travel Cost , 2019, 2019 International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA).

[20]  Shigeo Hirose,et al.  Operation of underwater rescue robot anchor diver III during the 2011 Tohoku Earthquake and Tsunami , 2011, OCEANS'11 MTS/IEEE KONA.