Opinion-based Strategy for Distributed Multi-Robot Task Allocation in Swarms of Robots

Abstract

Opinions of individuals in large groups evolve through interactions with neighbors and the environment, which can be modeled with opinion dynamics. In this paper, we propose a distributed opinion-based strategy for large-scale multi-robot task allocation utilizing the convergence behaviors of opinion dynamics. The strategy relies on the specialized opinion dynamics on the unit sphere for robot task selection. We investigate the convergence behaviors of opinion dynamics in the context of regions of attraction. Simulation results with a swarm of 200 homogeneous robots validate the effectiveness of our proposed strategy.