Scalable Task Assignment for Heterogeneous Multi-Robot Teams. (7th February 2013)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: García, Paula; Caamaño, Pilar; Duro, Richard J.; Bellas, Francisco
• Is Part Of: International journal of advanced robotic systems. Volume 10:Number 2(2013)
• Publication Date: 2013-02-07
• Subjects: Auction-Based Task Assignment -- Multi-Robot Coordination -- Behaviour-Based Architectures; Robotics -- Periodicals; Robotics; Periodicals; 629.892
• DOI: 10.5772/55489
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 1729-8806

Abstract

This work deals with the development of a dynamic task assignment strategy for heterogeneous multi-robot teams in typical real world scenarios. The strategy must be efficiently scalable to support problems of increasing complexity with minimum designer intervention. To this end, we have selected a very simple auction-based strategy, which has been implemented and analysed in a multi-robot cleaning problem that requires strong coordination and dynamic complex subtask organization. We will show that the selection of a simple auction strategy provides a linear computational cost increase with the number of robots that make up the team and allows the solving of highly complex assignment problems in dynamic conditions by means of a hierarchical sub-auction policy. To coordinate and control the team, a layered behaviour-based architecture has been applied that allows the reusing of the auction-based strategy to achieve different coordination levels.