Coalition formation and Task Allocation of multiple autonomous robots

摘要

Multi robot systems are of increased demand in industrial environments for easier task execution in short durations. The challenge in deploying a multi robot system for task execution lies in coordinating the robots to perform a task collaboratively within the stipulated time. This paper deals with the following challenge in the multi robot system, first is the search for the most optimal solution for coalition formation, which acquires ample information about the task and the robot agent used, followed by allocating tasks to the robots in the coalition which is commonly referred to as Multi-Robot Task Allocation (MRTA) problem. The optimal solution for robot coalition lies in determining the best number of robots required to complete the task within the deadline that is achieved using dynamic ANT coalition technique which works online. The novelty of the proposed methodology lies in using the most effective local search process of the memetic algorithm rather than using the whole of the memetic algorithm which includes the global search and local search process.