Abstract
Previous studies have verified the feasibility of single unmanned roller tracking paths and have effectively evaluated the performance of pavement compaction. Nevertheless, the issue of scheduling faulty rollers (e.g., insufficient oil pressure) during collaborative pavement construction with multiple rollers has not been fully investigated, despite its prevalence in engineering practice. Although there are some patents that propose solutions for several cases, there is a lack of comprehensive, detailed and process-oriented scheduling strategies for specific scenarios. This paper introduces a framework for pavement construction comprising one paver and six rollers, and proposes a scheduling strategy for idle and faulty robots with the objective of addressing the problem of scheduling faulty rollers. Specifically, the traditional path planning task requires known beginning and end positions, while the scheduling position in this paper can be designed in advance. Consequently, this paper presents a methodology that leverages the ratio of discrete Bezier curve path points to discrete idle region points at distinct scheduling positions to ascertain the start and end positions of faulty and idle robots. In the scheduling process implementation phase, the paper considers the scene constraints and the model constraints of the rollers, and proposes a novel cost function that balances path length and safety distance. Furthermore, to address the issue of driving in opposite directions in the narrow passage, this paper proposes the interleaved scheduling scheme with the objective of enhancing the performance upper bound of the algorithm by significantly increasing the probability of finding a feasible solution. Moreover, the implementation of a discrete sampling of curve and position points ensures that the algorithm runs in an acceptable time. The results of comparative simulations demonstrate that the path planning algorithm proposed in this paper is more effective than alternative algorithms in addressing the specific application scenarios of this project. Furthermore, the integration of the interleaved scheduling framework has a considerable impact on the enhancement of the quality of the generated paths. The algorithm is capable of successfully completing the scheduling task of faulty and idle rollers with a road length of more than 100 m in a road width of 10.5 m, while ensuring that the other rollers are not affected in the completion of their respective tasks. The path search time is 24 s, the generated planning path length is 178.1 m and the safety distance is approximately 1.6 m.