Optimally greedy control of team dispatching systems

Abstract

We introduce the team dispatching (TD) problem arising in cooperative control of multiagent systems, such as spacecraft constellations and UAV fleets. The problem is formulated as an optimal control problem similar in structure to queuing problems modeled by restless bandits. A near-optimality result is derived for greedy dispatching under oversubscription conditions, and used to formulate an approximate deterministic model of greedy scheduling dynamics. Necessary conditions for optimal team configuration switching are then derived for restricted TD problems using this deterministic model. Explicit construction is provided for a special case, showing that the most-oversubscribed-first (MOF) switching sequence is optimal when team configurations have low overlap in their processing capabilities. Simulation results for TD problems in multi-spacecraft interferometric imaging are summarized. © 2007 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg.