An Optimal Orthogonal Recharging Route Planner: A Multi-Robots, Multi-Rendezvous Recharging Scheme

Abstract

The issue of recharging a group of worker robots in their working environment has been tackled. For this purpose, a special purpose tanker robot has been devised with a planner, capable of generating recharging route that minimizes the cumulative sum of orthogonal distances of worker robots from their current locations to their corresponding recharging rendezvous locations along the recharging route (hence the term Orthogonal Recharging Route or ORR Planner). It has been proven that the ORR planner will result into a recharging route that minimizes the total worker robots distance traversal for recharging, irrespective of location of charging station/tanker. Experiments have been conducted to examine the practicality of the technique in contrast with scenarios of fixed charging station, as well as results of previous work based on Ordinary and Weighted Least Squares (OLS and WLS respectively) regressions. Results obtained in simulations are provided for illustrative comparison purpose among the different techniques.