meSch: Multi-Agent Energy-Aware Scheduling for Task Persistence

Abstract: This paper develops a scheduling protocol for a team of autonomous robots that operate on long-term persistent tasks. The proposed framework, called meSch, accounts for the limited battery capacity of the robots and ensures that the robots return to charge their batteries one at a time at the single charging station. The protocol is applicable to general nonlinear robot models under certain assumptions, does not require robots to be deployed at different times, and can handle robots with different discharge rates. We further consider the case when the charging station is mobile and its state information is subject to uncertainty. The feasibility of the algorithm in terms of ensuring persistent charging is given under certain assumptions, while the efficacy of meSch is validated through simulation and hardware experiments.