A Task Allocation Approach of Multi-Heterogeneous Robot System for Elderly Care

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

This paper mainly discusses a novel smart home for elderly care based on seven heterogeneous nursing robots and proposes an MRTA algorithm considering execution time and energy consumption. Smart home for elderly care is firstly presented, and then the multi-robot task allocation algorithm is discussed. Finally, some demos are conducted to the developed method.

The paper fits well within the scope of the journal, and it is well written. The following items should be considered.

1. Part of the text and pictures in Figure 1 are blurry.

2. It would be better to cite the related references in Table 1 for different robots.

3. The order of Figure 3 and Table 2 is a bit confusing.

4. Before discussing the experimental results, the details of experimental procedures should be given.

5. In order to let readers better understand future work, please give specific research directions.

Author Response

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Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

The paper propose a system for a smart home for elderly care based on seven heterogeneous nursing robots. It  proposes a multi-robot task allocation (MRTA) algorithm considering execution time and energy consumption. Here are the main comments on the paper:

- English of the paper should be reviewed

- Paper speaks about robots. It is not clear whom made those robots. Are they commercial? If this is the case, how do they control them through the real experiments? No discussion about software control or another control of the robots is made in the paper.

- Consequently the paper claims that a real experiment was done. This is not suficiently described. How is the robots controlled? Who made them? The scenario with real people should be better described. And so on.

 

I will give major revision.

Author Response

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Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Round 2

Reviewer 1 Report

I have no further comments.

Author Response

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Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Reviewer 2 Report

The current version of the paper is an improvement as compared to the previous one. However, I think that the comments are still not fully addressed. I sugest:

- Each robot to have a paragraph description with references for further readings

- To asses everything, the testing scenarios with humans should still be further detailed. For example in an appendix.

 

Without this information I appreciate the paper to be incomplete

Author Response

Please see the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf