Distributed Near-optimal Multi-robots Coordination in Heterogeneous Task Allocation

Abstract

This paper explores the heterogeneous task allocation problem in Multi-robot systems. A game-theoretic formulation of the problem is proposed to align the goal of individual robots with the system objective. The concept of Nash equilibrium is applied to define a desired solution for the task allocation problem in which each robot can allocate itself to an appropriate task group. We also introduce a market-based distributed mechanism, called DisNE, to allow the robots to exchange messages with tasks and move between task groups, eventually reaching an equilibrium solution. We carry out comprehensive empirical studies to demonstrate that DisNE achieves near-optimal system utility in significantly shorter computation times when compared with the state-of-the-art mechanisms.