Task Allocation Strategy for Time-Constrained Tasks in Robots Swarms

Abstract

Task allocation is a key problem, which has a direct influ-ence on the system performance in all kinds of distributed systems. This paper focuses on a specific kind of task alloca-tion in swarm robotic systems, where the tasks are associated with specific time constraints. The paper presents a self-organized task allocation strategy, which aims to assign robot swarms to time-constrained tasks in a distributed manner. The robots assignment is performed based on particular specifications including task sizes and deadlines in addition to the specification of the single robot performance on the considered tasks. No central control is required to govern the swarm behaviour and no communica-tion is exploited among robots. 1