Multi-robot multi-task allocation for hospital logistics

Abstract

A number of materials are delivered inside a hospital, and a fleet of autonomous navigating mobile robots are applied to replace these heavy mobility works. To increase the efficiency of using multiple robots, more than one delivery tasks can be assigned to a robot instead of delivering only one package at a time. This multi-task allocation algorithm (MTA) is introduced in this paper and a simulator is developed to measure the performance of the algorithm. The simulator models the hospital environment and enables to compare the delivery productivity by changing the number of robot. It shows that the efficiency of MTA increases dramatically compared to the single task allocation when using the same number of robot.