Mission execution optimisation is an essential aspect for the real world deployment
of robotic systems. Execution optimisation can affect the outcome of a mission by
allowing longer missions to be executed or by minimising the execution time of a
mission.
This work proposes methods for optimising inspection and sensing missions
undertaken by a team of robots operating under communication and budget constraints. Regarding the inspection missions, it proposes the use of an information
sharing architecture that is tolerant of communication errors combined with multirobot task allocation approaches that are inspired by the optimisation literature.
Regarding the optimisation of sensing missions under budget constraints novel
heuristic approaches are proposed that allow optimisation to be performed online.
These methods are then combined to allow the online optimisation of long-range
sensing missions performed by a team of robots communicating through a noisy
channel and having budget constraints.
All the proposed approaches have been evaluated using simulations and real-world robots. The gathered results are discussed in detail and show the benefits
and the constraints of the proposed approaches, along with suggestions for further
future directions
