Effective Task Allocation for Evolving Multi-robot Teams in Dangerous Environments

Abstract

This paper describes the task management elements of a framework for coordinating a changing collection of heterogeneous robots operating in complex and dynamic environments such as disaster zones. Our framework allows a team to discover and distribute tasks among its members, in a distributed fashion, where the structure of the team is under regular change. Robots may become lost or fail at any time, and new equipment may arrive at any time. We evaluate our framework through an example implementation where robots perform exploration and search for victims in a simulated disaster environment.