1884. Optimizing Solar-Powered Vehicle Missions: A Routing Problem for Multi-Vehicle Mars Exploration
Invited abstract in session WC-58: Team Orienteering Problems, stream Vehicle Routing and Logistics.
Wednesday, 12:30-14:00Room: Liberty 1.13
Authors (first author is the speaker)
| 1. | Wojciech Burzyński
|
| 2. | Mariusz Kaleta
|
| Inistitute of Control & Computation Engineering, Warsaw University of Technology |
Abstract
The success of the Ingenuity and Perseverance Mars vehicles demonstrates the feasibility of multi-vehicle extraterrestrial missions. We belive Future Mars exploration missions will involve increasingly larger cohorts of rovers, making task and route planning a critical component of mission design. In the talk, we introduce the Solar-Powered Rover Routing Problem (SPRRP), a specialized variant of the Team Orienteering Problem (TOP), where a fleet of Martian rovers must visit a subset of Points of Interest (PoIs) to conduct research, each offering a certain benefit. The goal is to optimize rover routes and PoI selection while adhering to resource constraints.
Rovers are electrically powered, equipped with batteries and solar panels. Both movement and research activities consume energy, but unlike Electric Vehicle Routing Problems (EVRP), SPRRP relies on solar panels for energy replenishment instead of charging stations. Solar charging occurs alongside other tasks but is influenced by weather and time of day.
We present a formal problem formulation, followed by results from Mixed Integer Linear Programming (MILP) solvers. Due to the problem's complexity, we propose a metaheuristic approach. However, solution encoding methods known for related problems are not directly appliable and must be adapted for the case of solar panels.
Keywords
- Vehicle Routing
- Metaheuristics
- Programming, Mixed-Integer
Status: accepted
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