Towards Design of an Efficient Sensing Data Acquisition scheme for UAVs-assisted Wireless Sensor Networks

This paper investigates sensing data acquisition issues from large-scale hazardous environments using UAVs-assisted WSNs. Most of the existing schemes suffer from low scalability, high latency, low throughput, and low service time of the deployed network. To overcome these issues, we considered a clustered WSN architecture in which multiple UAVs are dispatched with assigned path knowledge for sensing data acquisition from each cluster heads (CHs) of the network. This paper first presents a non-cooperative Game Theory (GT)-based CHs selection algorithm and load balanced cluster formation scheme. Next, to provide timely delivery of sensing information using UAVs, hybrid meta-heuristic based optimal path planning algorithm is proposed by combing the best features of Dolphin Echolocation and Crow Search meta-heuristic techniques. In this research work, a novel objective function is formulated for both load-balanced CHs selection and for optimal the path planning problem. Results analyses demonstrate that the proposed scheme significantly performs better than the state-of-art schemes.

Bi-Level Optimization Dispatch of Integrated-Energy Systems With P2G and Carbon Capture

The power-to-gas (P2G) technology transforms the unidirectional coupling of power network and natural gas network into bidirectional coupling, and its operational characteristics provide an effective way for wind and solar energy accommodation. The paper proposes a bi-level optimal dispatch model for the integrated energy system with carbon capture system and P2G facility. The upper model is an optimal allocation model for coal-fired units, and the lower model is an economic dispatch model for the integrated energy system. Moreover, the upper model is solved by transforming the model into a mixed-integer linear programming problem and calling CPLEX, and the lower model is a multi-objective planning problem, which is solved by improving the small-habitat particle swarm algorithm. Finally, the simulation is validated by the MATLAB platform, and the results show that the simultaneous consideration of carbon capture system and P2G facility improves the economics of the integrated energy system and the capacity of wind and solar energy accommodation.

Outpatient Appointment Optimization: A Case Study of a Chemotherapy Service

In this paper, we study a complex outpatient planning problem in the chemotherapy department. The planning concerns sequences of patients’ treatment sessions subject to exact in-between resting periods (i.e., exact time-lags). The planning is constrained by the hospital infrastructure and the availability of medical staff (i.e., multiple time-varying resources’ availability). In order to maximize the patients’ service quality, the objective of the function considered is to minimize the total wait times, which is equivalent to the criteria for minimizing the total completion time. Our main contribution is a thorough analysis of this problem, using the Hybrid Flow Shop problem as a theoretical framework to study the problem. A novel Mixed Integer Linear Programming (MILP) is introduced. Concerning the resolution methods, priority-based heuristics and an adapted genetic algorithm (GA) are presented. Numerical experiments are conducted on historical data to compare the performances of the approximate resolution methods against the MILP solved by CPLEX. Numerical results confirm the performances of the proposed methods.

Path planning of patrol robot based on improved discrete electrostatic discharge algorithm

Safety is the premise of the stable and sustainable development of the chemical industry, safety accidents will not only cause casualties and economic losses, but also cause panic among workers and nearby residents. Robot safety inspection based on the fire risk level in a chemical industrial park can effectively reduce process accident losses and can even prevent accidents. The optimal inspection path is an important support for patrol efficiency, therefore, in this study, the fire risk level of each location to be inspected, which is obtained by the electrostatic discharge algorithm (ESDA)–nonparallel support vector machine evaluation model, is combined with the optimisation of the inspection path; that is, the fire risk level is used to guide the inspection path planning. The inspection path planning problem is a typical travelling salesman problem (TSP). The discrete ESDA (DESDA), based on the ESDA, is proposed. In view of the shortcomings of the long convergence time and ease of falling into the local optimum of the DESDA, further improvements are proposed in the form of the IDESDA, in which the greedy algorithm is used for the initial population, the 2-opt algorithm is applied to generate new solutions, and the elite set is joined to provide the best segment for jumping out of the local optimum. In the experiments, 11 public calculation examples were used to verify the algorithm performance. The IDESDA exhibited higher accuracy and better stability when solving the TSP. Its application to chemical industrial parks can effectively solve the path optimisation problem of patrol robots.

A Multi-Objective Optimization Approach for Multi-Vehicle Path Planning Problems considering Human-Robot Interactions

There has been unprecedented development in the field of unmanned ground vehicles (UGVs) over the past few years. UGVs have been used in many fields including civilian and military with applications such as military reconnaissance, transportation, and search and research missions. This is due to their increasing capabilities in terms of performance, power, and tackling risky missions. The level of autonomy given to these UGVs is a critical factor to consider. In many applications of multi-robotic systems like “search-and-rescue” missions, teamwork between human and robots is essential. In this paper, given a team of manned ground vehicles (MGVs) and unmanned ground vehicles (UGVs), the objective is to develop a model which can minimize the number of teams and total distance traveled while considering human-robot interaction (HRI) studies. The human costs of managing a team of UGVs by a manned ground vehicle (MGV) are based on human-robot interaction (HRI) studies. In this research, we introduce a combinatorial, multi objective ground vehicle path planning problem which takes human-robot interactions into consideration. The objective of the problem is to find: ideal number of teams of MGVs-UGVs that follow a leader-follower framework where a set of UGVs follow an MGV; and path for each team such that the missions are completed efficiently.

An Adaptive Route Planning Method of Connected Vehicles for Improving the Transport Efficiency

In recent years, the route-planning problem has gained increased interest due to the development of intelligent transportation systems (ITSs) and increasing traffic congestion especially in urban areas. An independent route-planning strategy for each in-vehicle terminal improves its individual travel efficiency. However, individual optimal routes pursue the maximization of individual benefit and may contradict the global benefit, thereby reducing the overall transport efficiency of the road network. To improve traffic efficiency while considering the travel time of individual vehicles, we propose a new dynamic route-planning method by innovatively introducing a bidding mechanism in the connected vehicle scenario for the first time. First, a novel bidding-based dynamic route planning is proposed to formulate vehicle routing schemes for vehicles affected by congestion via the bidding process. Correspondingly, a bidding price incorporating individual and global travel times was designed to balance the travel benefits of both objectives. Then, in the bidding process, a new local search algorithm was designed to select the winning routing scheme set with the minimum bidding price. Finally, the proposed method was tested and validated through case studies of simulated and actual driving scenarios to demonstrate that the bidding mechanism would be conducive to improving the transport efficiency of road networks in large-scale traffic flow scenarios. This study positively contributes to the research and development of traffic management in ITSs.

GRASP-Tabu Search Algorithms for the Route Planning Problem in Spatial Crowdsourcing

With the speedy progress of mobile devices, a lot of commercial enterprises have exploited crowdsourcing as a useful approach to gather information to develop their services. Thus, spatial crowdsourcing has appeared as a new platform in e-commerce and which implies procedures of requesters and workers. A requester submits spatial tasks request to the workers who choose and achieve them during a limited time. Thereafter, the requester pays only the worker for the well accomplished the task. In spatial crowdsourcing, each worker is required to physically move to the place to accomplish the spatial task and each task is linked with location and time. The objective of this article is to find an optimal route to the worker through maximizing her rewards with respecting some constraint, using an approach based on GRASP with Tabu. The proposed algorithm is used in the literature for benchmark instances. Computational results indicate that the proposed and the developed algorithm is competitive with other solution approaches.