Linear temporal logic vehicle routing with applications to multi-UAV mission planning

Missions with high combinatorial complexity involving several logical and temporal constraints often arise in cooperative control of multiple Uninhabited Aerial Vehicles. In this paper, we propose a new class of problems that generalizes the standard Vehicle Routing Problem (VRP) by addressing complex tasks and constraints on the mission, called the ‘mission specifications’, expressed in a high‐level specification language. In the generalized problem setup, these mission specifications are naturally specified using the Linear Temporal Logic language LTL−X. Using a novel systematic procedure, the LTL−X specification is converted to a set of constraints suitable to a Mixed‐Integer Linear Programming (MILP) formulation, which in turn can be incorporated into two widely‐used MILP formulations of the standard VRP. Solving the resulting MILP provides an optimal plan that satisfies the given mission specification. The paper also presents two mission planning applications. Copyright © 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.