Mixed path planning for multi‐robots in structured hospital environment

Multi-robots are used in hospital for the delivery service. To increase the delivery efficiency, an appropriate multi-robots path planning algorithm is required. This study explains a mixed path planning algorithm for multi-robots in structured hospital environment which combines the ‘corridor path planning’ and ‘room path planning’, ‘corridor path planning’ uses graph search algorithm to plan the path in corridor for multiple hospital robots, and it uses the strongly connected digraph to describe corridor environment, so it could simplify the multi-robots path planning problem. While the ‘room path planning’ uses the artificial potential field method to plan the path in room for multiple hospital robots, it makes the hospital robot move flexibly in the room, so the robot could avoid the obstacle and other robots more flexibly. The algorithm is tested by simulation, and the result shows that mixed path planning algorithm makes the robot move fast in the corridor environment and move flexibly in the room environment.