Cooperative path planning for a class of carrier-vehicle systems.

In this work we concentrate on the problem of path planning in a scenario in which two different vehicles with complementary capabilities are employed cooperatively to perform a desired task in an optimal way. In particular we consider the case in which a vehicle carrier, typically slow but with virtually infinite operativity range, and a carried vehicle, which on the contrary is typically fast but with a shorter operative range, can be controlled together to pursuit a certain mission while minimizing a pre-defined cost function. In particular we will concentrate on a particular scenario, which we denoted as ¿fast-rescue¿ problem, providing optimal and heuristic solutions to various cases.