Collaborative A*-Market-based Intelligent Planning Algorithm for Multi-Spraying Robots

This paper addresses the cooperative path planning problem of multi-spraying robots with rectangular spraying areas, where obstacles are the rectangular spraying areas that are once completed. A novel collaborative A
^*
-market-based planning algorithm is designed to achieve the cooperative path planning with obstacle avoidance. The optimal performance of the robot utilization, the short time and the low path cost are under consideration and achieved by the proposed A
^*
-market planning algorithm. Three scenarios with the fixed starting points of each rectangular spraying area (that is, the upper left vertex, the upper right vertex, the lower left vertex and the lower right vertex) and without fixed starting points are given in simulation. It is indicated that the average time cost and the total distance cost in the case without fixed starting points are reduced by 7.93% and 15.54% as compared with the case with fixed starting points.