Simultaneous Human-robot Matching and Routing for Multi-robot Tour Guiding under Time Uncertainty

This work presents a framework for multi-robot tour guidance in a partially known environment with uncertainty, such as a museum. In the proposed centralized multi-robot planner, a simultaneous matching and routing problem (SMRP) is formulated to match the humans with robot guides according to their selected points of interest and generate the routes and schedules for the robots according to uncertain spatial and time estimation. A large neighborhood search algorithm is developed to find sub-optimal low-cost solutions for the SMRP efficiently. The scalability and optimality of the multi-robot planner are first evaluated computationally under different environment sizes and numbers of humans and robots. Then, a photo-realistic multi-robot simulation platform was developed based on Habitat-AI to verify the tour guiding performance in an uncertain indoor environment. Results demonstrate that the proposed centralized tour planner is scalable, makes a smooth tradeoff in the plans under different environmental constraints, and can lead to robust performance with inaccurate uncertainty estimations (within a certain margin).

Multimedia Detection and Processing of Remote-Sensing Image of Small Target Combined with Variable Neighborhood Search Algorithm

The development of scientific satellites has made it a reality for people to view the Earth from the sky. However, due to the resolution of the image obtained, the effective and accurate interpretation of remote-sensing images has always been one of the goals pursued by the industry. In this paper, we merge the variable neighborhood search algorithm, reduce the accuracy of remote-sensing images, clean the invalid information of the data, use unsupervised classification methods to quickly locate small targets, use it as verification information, compare and select the image data through sample information, distinguish the background and target results, and get stable detection results. Practice shows that this method can effectively detect small targets in remote-sensing images.

A Variable Neighborhood Search Algorithm with Constraint Relaxation for the Two-Echelon Vehicle Routing Problem with Simultaneous Delivery and Pickup Demands

This paper considers a special vehicle routing problem, the two-echelon vehicle routing problem with simultaneous delivery and pickup demands (2E-VRPSDP). The 2E-VRPSDP differs from classic transportation and vehicle routing problems in two ways. First, freight delivery from the depot to the customers is managed by shipping the freight through intermediate satellites. Second, each customer in the 2E-VRPSDP may have simultaneous delivery and pickup demands. The 2E-VRPSDP is an extension of the two-echelon vehicle routing problem (2E-VRP) and the vehicle routing problem with simultaneous delivery and pickup (VRPSDP). A variable neighborhood search algorithm is designed to solve the 2E-VRPSDP in which both feasible and infeasible solutions can be explored. Numerical results show that the proposed algorithm is effective and that the algorithm can provide reasonable solutions within an acceptable computational time.