Research Article
Decentralized Vehicle Routing in a Stochastic and Dynamic Environment with Customer Impatience
@INPROCEEDINGS{10.4108/ICST.ROBOCOMM2007.2220, author={M. Pavone and N. Bisnik and E. Frazzoli and V. Isler}, title={Decentralized Vehicle Routing in a Stochastic and Dynamic Environment with Customer Impatience}, proceedings={1st International ICST Conference on Robot Communication and Coordination}, proceedings_a={ROBOCOMM}, year={2010}, month={5}, keywords={Mobile Robotic Networks Sensor Networks Traveling Salesman Problem.}, doi={10.4108/ICST.ROBOCOMM2007.2220} }- M. Pavone
N. Bisnik
E. Frazzoli
V. Isler
Year: 2010
Decentralized Vehicle Routing in a Stochastic and Dynamic Environment with Customer Impatience
ROBOCOMM
ICST
DOI: 10.4108/ICST.ROBOCOMM2007.2220
Abstract
Consider the following scenario: a spatio-temporal stochastic process generates service requests, localized at points in a bounded region on the plane; these service requests are fulfilled when one of a team of mobile agents visits the location of the request. For example, a service request may represent the detection of an event in a sensor network application, which needs to be investigated on site. Once a service request has been generated, it remains active for an amount of time which is itself a random variable, and then expires. The problem we investigate is the following: what is the minimum number of mobile agents needed to ensure that each service request is fulfilled before expiring, with probability at least 1 − "? What strategy should they use to ensure this objective is attained? Formulating the probability of successfully servicing requests before expiration as a performance metric, we derive bounds on the minimum number of agents required to ensure a given performance level, and present decentralized motion coordination algorithms that approximate the optimal strategy.
