Autonomous coordination of heterogeneous vehicles for persistent monitoring problem with route and fuel constraints

The problem considered in this paper is to produce both routes and refuelling schedules for a heterogeneous fleet of autonomous mobile vehicles that provide efficient group work performance in large-scale persistent monitoring missions. In the model, the route for the group of vehicles must be determined on the extended time period to ensure regular and well-timed inspections of a set of tasks at scheduled intervals. The routes are limited by the speed limitation, onboard equipment and fuel capacity of the vehicles alongside with visitation frequency and equipment requirements of each task. Fuel capacity limitations force vehicles to recharge (refuel) at intervals using charging stations within the operation area. It is a problem of considerable practical interest to effectively route the heterogeneous group of vehicles under continuous rotation and in a dynamic environment with vehicle systems being subjected to malfunctions and unforeseen events. We propose two-level architecture for the group control system to coordinate cooperative vehicle actions during long-term multi-objective missions: while the high-level planner is designed to dynamically adjust fail-safe refuelling schedules for the vehicles in the group, the low-level planner is aimed to the accurate generation of the local group routes ensuring well-timed accomplishment of all tasks under technical constraints.