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A Formal Analysis and Taxonomy of Task Allocation in Multi-Robot SystemsArtificial Intelligence Lab, Stanford University, Stanford, CA 94305-9010, USAgerkey{at}stanford.edu
Computer Science Department, University of Southern California, Los Angeles, CA 90089-0781, USA Despite more than a decade of experimental work in multi-robot systems, important theoretical aspects of multi-robot coordination mechanisms have, to date, been largely untreated. To address this issue, we focus on the problem of multi-robot task allocation (MRTA). Most work on MRTA has been ad hoc and empirical, with many coordination architectures having been proposed and validated in a proof-of-concept fashion, but infrequently analyzed. With the goal of bringing objective grounding to this important area of research, we present a formal study of MRTA problems. A domain-independent taxonomy of MRTA problems is given, and it is shown how many such problems can be viewed as instances of other, well-studied, optimization problems. We demonstrate how relevant theory from operations research and combinatorial optimization can be used for analysis and greater understanding of existing approaches to task allocation, and to show how the same theory can be used in the synthesis of new approaches.
Key Words: task allocation • multi-robot systems • coordination • utility
The International Journal of Robotics Research, Vol. 23, No. 9,
939-954 (2004) This article has been cited by other articles:
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