Physical interference impact in multi-robot task allocation auction methods

Abstract

Task allocation is one of the main problems in multi-robot systems. Among other factors, to get a good task allocation, we have to take into account the physical interference effects between robots, that is, when two or more robots want to access to the same point at the same time. This paper analyzes interference impact using auction methods, one of the most popular task allocation systems. We show how the performance of the auction utility function can be improved if interference impact is included in it. We also provide a framework to simplify one of the main problems of all auction systems which is finding a good utility function. Our method has been tested using transport like tasks, where each object must be transported to a delivery point before a deadline. This is a simple task that is very useful to isolate the interference effects