University of Technology, Sydney. Faculty of Engineering and Information Technology.This thesis focuses on developing an approach to solve the complex problem of task allocation and motion coordination simultaneously for a large fleet of autonomous vehicles in highly constrained operational environments. The multi-vehicle task allocation and motion coordination problem consists of allocating different tasks to different autonomous vehicles and intelligently coordinating motions of the vehicles without human interaction. The motion coordination itself comprises two sub-problems: path planning and collision / deadlock avoidance. Although a number of research studies have attempted to solve one or two aspects of this problem, it is rare to note that many have attempted to solve the task allocation, path planning and collision avoidance simultaneously. Therefore, it cannot be conclusively said that, optimal or near-optimal solutions generated based on one aspect of the problem will be optimal or near optimal results for the whole problem. It is advisable to solve the problem as one complete problem rather than decomposing it. This thesis intends to solve the complex task allocation, path planning and collision avoidance problem simultaneously.
A Simultaneous Task Allocation and Motion Coordination (STAMC) approach is developed to solve the multi-vehicle task allocation and motion coordination problem in a concurrent manner. Further, a novel algorithm called Simultaneous Path and Motion Planning (SiPaMoP) is proposed for collision free motion coordination. The main objective of this algorithm is to generate collision free paths for autonomous vehicles, once they are assigned with tasks in a conventional path topology of a material handling environment. The Dijkstra and A * shortest path search algorithms are utilised in the proposed Simultaneous Path and Motion Planning algorithm.
The multi-vehicle task allocation and motion coordination problem is first studied in a static environment where all the tasks, vehicles and operating environment information are assumed to be known. The multi-vehicle task allocation and motion coordination problem in a dynamic environment, where tasks, vehicles and operating environment change with time is then investigated. Furthermore, issues like vehicle breakdowns, which are common in real world situations, are considered. The computational cost of solving the multi-vehicle STAMC problem is also addressed by proposing a distributed computational architecture and implementing that architecture in a cluster computing system. Finally, the proposed algorithms are tested in a case study in an automated container terminal environment with a large fleet of autonomous straddle carriers.
Since the multi-vehicle task allocation and motion coordination is an NP-hard problem, it is almost impossible to find out the optimal solutions within a reasonable time frame. Therefore, this research focuses on investigating the appropriateness of heuristic and evolutionary algorithms for solving the STAMC problem. The Simulated Annealing algorithm, Ant Colony and Auction algorithms have been investigated. Commonly used dispatching rules such as first come first served, and closest task first have also been applied for comparison. Simulation tests of the proposed approach is conducted based on information from the Fishermen Island's container terminal of Patrick Corporation (Pty.) Ltd in Queensland, Australia where a large fleet of autonomous straddle carriers operate. The results shows that the proposed meta-heuristic techniques based simultaneous task allocation and motion coordination approach can effectively solve the complex multi-vehicle task allocation and motion coordination problem and it is capable of generating near optimal results within an acceptable time frame
