Task allocation for multi-agent systems based on distributed many-objective evolutionary algorithm and greedy algorithm

Abstract

Task allocation is a key issue in multi-agent systems, and finding the optimal strategy for task allocation has been proved to be an NP-hard problem. Existing task allocation methods for multi-agent systems mainly adopt distributed full search strategies or local search strategies. The former requires a lot of computation and communication costs, while the latter cannot ensure the diversity and quality of solutions. Therefore, in this paper, we combine a distributed many-objective evolutionary algorithm called D-NSGA3 with a greedy algorithm to search the task allocation solutions, and we comprehensively consider the constraints related to space, time, energy consumption and agent function in multi-agent systems. Specifically, D-NSGA3 is used to optimize multiple objectives simultaneously so as to ensure the search capability and the diversity of solutions. Alternate search between D-NSGA3 and the greedy algorithm is conducted to enhance the local optimizing ability. Experimental results show that the proposed method can effectively solve large-scale task allocation problems (e.g., the number of agents is not less than 250, and that of tasks is not less than 1000). Compared with the existing work called MSEA, the proposed method could achieve better and more diverse solutions.