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Center for Nonlinear Studies |
Recent technological progress allows for low-cost mass production of small and simple mobile robots. Battery-powered self-driving vehicles and drones are some of the most widely spread examples. Recently, there are attempts to deploy such autonomous agents to deliver physical goods (packages). In the future, for a delivery ofpackages over longer distances, a swarm of agents is a likely option to be adapted, since the energy supply of the agents is limited, or the agents will be required to operate locally, or simply because the usage of some agents is more costly than others.
In this talk, we consider the problem of delivering multiple packages between specified source-target locations by a group pf mobile agents. Each agent has individual parameters defining its fuel consumption, its maximum velocity and its battery constraints. These parameters give rise to plentiful optimization and decision problems regarding the operation of the agents. Specifically, we lay a theoretical foundation for the design of centralized algorithms for the problem of delivering allpackages, subject to one or more of three important optimization goals: Energy-efficiency, Time-efficiency, and Resource-efficiency.
Host: Tillmann Weisser