Optimal Task Assignment and Path Planning for Multiple Patrol Robots in Makeshift Hospitals

Patrol robots play important roles in security guarantees for makeshift hospitals that are established to assist emergency medical treatment such as pandemics and natural disasters. To improve the effectiveness of the robot patrol and save the cost, the key is to develop an optimal task assignment method and then design a costless motion path for robots. In this paper, the task assignment and path planning for multiple patrol robots are formulated as a multi-constraint multi-objective optimization problem, and a new optimization algorithm based on the particle swarm algorithm is proposed. Due to the irregular shape of the makeshift hospital, the corner collision protection rules are designed to ensure the collision avoidance. In addition, the path planning costs of different task assignments are calculated. Our study demonstrates the effectiveness of the proposed algorithm for improving security in makeshift hospitals while optimizing resource allocation.