Task Allocation and Route Planning for Robotic Service Networks with Multiple Depots in Indoor Environments

Studies suggest that the recent technological advancements in robotics can foster the automation capabilities of the built infrastructure by introducing service robots. Task-allocation and path-planning are two of the fundamental challenges faced by such task-oriented robots. Existing algorithms in this domain have been adapted from outdoor logistics based applications with context-specific assumptions. This study particularly addresses this issue, extends the authors' previous efforts, and proposes a new methodology to optimize the task allocation and route planning in case of multiple starts and destination depots where each robot begin and end at the same depot. Scenario analysis is conducted to compare the performance (e.g., total distance) of the proposed multi-depot algorithm with the single-depot one. The developed methodology is generic and can be used for a wide range of indoor building environment applications. Finally, limitations of the current approach are identified, and future work directions that require further investigation are proposed.