Route scheduling approach for airport snow shoveling using formations of autonomous ploughs

This paper presents a route scheduling algorithm for efficient snow shoveling of big international airports. The keynote of the project consists in using temporary formations of autonomous snowploughs. The size of the formations depends on the width of runway to shovel, which supposes splitting and merging of the teams during the cleaning process.The route scheduling method itself is based on the design of cleaning coalitions which are adapted for each specific task. The decisions about the optimal team composition and the optimal sequence of the tasks are taken by an heuristic approach that is combined with an exploration of the space of solutions on a limited horizon. Furthermore in the paper a formation driving approach is discussed. The method commands the robots to form a formation which optimally covers the roads surface and enables to push the snow by their shovels to the sides effectively. The scheduling method as well as the formation driving approach were verified by simulations and by hardware experiments.