A Centralized Multi-Robot Task Allocation for Industrial Plant Inspection by Using A* and Genetic Algorithms

Multi-robot systems are widely employed in various applications including industrial plant inspection. However, current research work mainly focuses on the methods of object detection, and rarely addresses task allocation and path-planning of multi-robot systems for industrial plant inspection. Therefore, a centralized method for multi-robot task allocation (MRTA) and path-planning to solve inspection problems is proposed in this paper. For the first time, the problem statement of the task allocation for inspection problems is formulated. This paper introduces the implementation of the algorithm based on A* and a novel Genetic Algorithm including the environment representation. The task allocation and path-planning are performed based on the assumption that the robots work in known environments. The proposed algorithm is tested in a simulation study derived from a large industrial site.

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