Multi-robot task allocation for airport runway inspection

Abstract

Airport runway safety inspections and timely Foreign Object Debris (FOD) removal can effectively guarantee the safe take-off and landing of flights. At present, the number of flights taking off and landing on the airport runway is large, and the runway inspection time window is short, so there are problems such as safety inspection and FOD removal in time, which affect the safety of flight takeoff and landing. The use of multiple inspection robots for inspection and the use of multiple FOD removal robots for FOD removal can effectively shorten the inspection and FOD removal operation time. In order to solve the problem of multi-robot task allocation in airport runway safety inspection and FOD removal, this paper proposes a "inspection-removal" model and an extended Consensus Based Bundle Algorithm (CBBA) based on time window constraints, which are used for multi-robot task allocation. This algorithm effectively solves the problem of cooperative allocation between inspection robots and FOD removal robots. The algorithm has achieved good experimental results in a simulation environment, and can be used in airport runway safety inspections.