Robot Mission Planning using Co-evolutionary Optimization

Mission planning is a complex motion planning problem specified by using Temporal Logic constituting of Boolean and temporal operators, typically solved by model verification algorithms with an exponential complexity. The paper proposes co-evolutionary optimization thus building an iterative solution to the problem. The language for mission specification is generic enough to represent everyday missions, while specific enough to design heuristics. The mission is broken into components which cooperate with each other. The experiments confirm that the robot is able to outperform the search, evolutionary and model verification techniques. The results are demonstrated by using a Pioneer LX robot.