Optimal Path Planning in Cooperative Heterogeneous Multi-robot Delivery Systems

  • Neil Mathew
  • Stephen L. Smith
  • Steven L. Waslander
Chapter
First Online:
Part of the Springer Tracts in Advanced Robotics book series (STAR, volume 107)

Abstract

This paper addresses a team of cooperating vehicles performing autonomous deliveries in urban environments. The cooperating team comprises two vehicles with complementary capabilities, a truck restricted to travel along a street network, and a quadrotor micro-aerial vehicle of capacity one that can be deployed from the truck to perform deliveries. The problem is formulated as an optimal path planning problem on a graph and the goal is to find the shortest cooperative route enabling the quadrotor to deliver items at all requested locations. The problem is shown to be NP-hard using a reduction from the Travelling Salesman Problem and an algorithmic solution is proposed using a graph transformation to the Generalized Travelling Salesman Problem, which can be solved using existing methods. Simulation results compare the performance of the presented algorithms and demonstrate examples of delivery route computations over real urban street maps.

Keywords

Travelling Salesman Problem Graph Transformation Runtime Complexity Delivery Point Street Edge 
These keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.
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Copyright information

© Springer International Publishing Switzerland 2015

Authors and Affiliations

  • Neil Mathew
    • 1
  • Stephen L. Smith
    • 1
  • Steven L. Waslander
    • 1
  1. 1.University of WaterlooWaterlooCanada

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