Decentralized task allocation for heterogeneous teams with cooperation constraints

• Main Authors: Choi, Han-Lim (Contributor), Whitten, Andrew Koo (Contributor), How, Jonathan P. (Contributor)
• Other Authors: Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Aeronautics and Astronautics (Contributor)
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, 2010-10-06T14:30:08Z.
• Subjects: Article
• Online Access: Get fulltext

This paper presents decentralized methods for allocating heterogeneous tasks to a network of agents with different capabilities, when the rules of engagement dictate various cooperation constraints. The new methods are built upon the consensus-based bundle algorithm (CBBA), and the key extensions to the baseline CBBA are: (a) task decomposition and associated scoring modification to allow for soft-constrained cooperation preference, and (b) a decentralized task elimination protocol to ensure satisfaction of the hard-constrained cooperation requirements. The new extensions are shown to preserve the robust convergence property of the baseline CBBA, and numerical examples on a cooperative track & strike mission verify the performance improvement by these extended capabilities.
United States. Air Force Office of Scientific Research (grant FA9550-08-1-0086)
United States. Office of Naval Research (STTR # N00014-08-C-0707)