Collaborative Missions with Heterogeneous Teams: Mathematical Model and Solution Approach

We consider the problem of the joint mission planning with a team of heterogeneous physical agents. The type of missions that we consider are composed of a set of spatially distributed tasks that need to be selected and assigned to the agents for dealing with them. A plan consists of a set of directives specifying who does what, where, when, and for how long. The aim is to optimize system-level performance by explicitly taking into account and exploiting the different sensory-motor characteristics of the agents. We tackle this general problem and propose a mixed integer linear formulation of it, including a number of aspects/constraints that closely model features and requests of realistic scenarios. A solution approach with quality guarantees, based on the combination of a metaheuristic and a mathematical programming method, is presented.