Different approaches to solve the MRTA problem

Abstract

The multi-robot task allocation problem is a fundamental problem in robotics research area. The problem roughly consists of finding an optimal allocation of tasks among several robots to reduce the mission cost to a minimum. As mentioned in Chap. 6, extensive research has been conducted in the area for answering the following question: Which robot should execute which task? In this chapter, we design different solutions to solve the MRTA problem. We propose four different approaches: an improved distributed market-based approach (IDMB), a clustering market-based approach (CM-MTSP), a fuzzy logic-based approach (FL-MTSP), and Move-and-Improve approach. These approaches must define how tasks are assigned to the robots. The IDBM, CM-MTSP, and Move-and-Improve approaches are based on the use of an auction process where bids are used to evaluate the assignment. The FL-MTSP is based on the use of the fuzzy logic algebra to combine objectives to be optimized.