Numerical Evaluation of Sample Gathering Solutions for Mobile Robots

Abstract

This paper applies mathematical modeling and solution numerical evaluation to the problem of collecting a set of samples scattered throughout a graph environment and transporting them to a storage facility. A team of identical robots is available, where each robot has a limited amount of energy and it can carry one sample at a time. The graph weights are related to energy and time consumed for moving between adjacent nodes, and thus, the task is transformed to a specific optimal assignment problem. The design of the mathematical model starts from a mixed-integer linear programming problem whose solution yields an optimal movement plan that minimizes the total time for gathering all samples. For reducing the computational complexity of the optimal solution, we develop two sub-optimal relaxations and then we quantitatively compare all the approaches based on extensive numerical simulations. The numerical evaluation yields a decision diagram that can help a user to choose the appropriate method for a given problem instance.