Task Allocation Using a Team of Robots

Purpose of Review Task allocation using a team or coalition of robots is one of the most important problems in robotics, computer science, operational research, and artificial intelligence. We present a survey of multi-robot task allocation covering many problem variants and solution approaches, both centralized and decentralized. Recent Findings In recent work, research has focused on handling complex objectives and feasibility constraints amongst other variations of the multi-robot task allocation problem. There are many examples of important research and recent progress in these directions, which are captured in this survey, along with similar examples for the various solutions that have been developed to solve such problems. Summary We first present a general formulation of the task allocation problem that generalizes several versions that are well-studied. Our formulation includes the states of robots, tasks, and the surrounding environment in which they operate, and we describe how the problem can be varied depending on the feasibility constraints, objective functions, and the level of dynamically changing information. In addition, we discuss existing solution approaches for the problem including optimization-based approaches, and market-based approaches.