Research on Coupled Task Allocation and Scheduling of Multi-type Robots

Task allocation problem and scheduling problem have always been hot topics in the robotics research field. Both of them can be divided into many categories. Among all these categories, coupled task allocation and scheduling problem (CTASP) is a quite difficult problem, especially for of multi-type robots. However, few researches are conducted on this area. Usually, the CTASP is studied for multi-type robots with fixed execution sequence in the reported literature. However, this paper will study the CTASP for multi-type robots with flexible execution sequence. A two-dimension genetic algorithm (TDGA) is designed to solve this type of problem, combined with rank minimal heuristic (RMH) algorithm to provide an elite strategy. The simulation experiment proves that TDGA can solve this kind of problems efficiently, and the efficiency of hybrid genetic algorithm has been further improved.