An improved ant colony optimization for the multi-robot path planning with timeliness

To achieve efficient search performance for the multi-robot system which carries out the goal search task with consideration of timeliness, a multi-robot collaborative path planning system is designed to guide the robots during the search process. In the system, a planning method based on an Improved Ant Colony Optimization (IACO) algorithm is proposed. In the solution procedure, the path cost and goal timeliness are taken as two optimization goals. Compared to the traditional optimization algorithm, the IACO algorithm has global superiority which brings about better solution. Experiment results show that all robots accomplish the search task safely and efficiently by collaborative work using the proposed approach.