Journal Article10.1007/S10846-014-0154-2
A Distributed Task Allocation Algorithm for a Multi-Robot System in Healthcare Facilities
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TL;DR: The proposed Consensus Based Parallel Auction and Execution (CBPAE), a distributed algorithm for task allocation in a system of multiple heterogeneous autonomous robots deployed in a healthcare facility, based on auction and consensus principles, is suitable for highly dynamic real world environments.
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Abstract: Various ambient assisted living (AAL) technologies have been proposed for improving the living conditions of elderly people. One of them is to introduce robots to reduce dependency on support staff. The tasks commonly encountered in a healthcare facility such as a care home for elderly people are heterogeneous and are of different priorities. A care home environment is also dynamic and new emergency priority tasks, which if not attended shortly may result in fatal situations, may randomly appear. Therefore, it is better to use a multi-robot system (MRS) consisting of heterogeneous robots than designing a single robot capable of doing all tasks. An efficient task allocation algorithm capable of handling the dynamic nature of the environment, the heterogeneity of robots and tasks, and the prioritisation of tasks is required to reap the benefits of introducing an MRS. This paper proposes Consensus Based Parallel Auction and Execution (CBPAE), a distributed algorithm for task allocation in a system of multiple heterogeneous autonomous robots deployed in a healthcare facility, based on auction and consensus principles. Unlike many of the existing market based task allocation algorithms, which use a time extended allocation of tasks before the actual execution is initialised, the proposed algorithm uses a parallel auction and execution framework, and is thus suitable for highly dynamic real world environments. The robots continuously resolve any conflicts in the bids on tasks using inter-robot communication and a consensus process in each robot before a task is assigned to a robot. We demonstrate the effectiveness of the CBPAE by comparing its simulation results with those of an existing market based distributed multi-robot task allocation algorithm and through experiments on real robots.
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Citations
Cooperative Heterogeneous Multi-Robot Systems: A Survey
TL;DR: More autonomous end-to-end solutions need to be experimentally tested and developed while incorporating natural language ontology and dictionaries to automate complex task decomposition and leveraging big data advancements to improve perception algorithms for robotics.
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Distributed Task Rescheduling With Time Constraints for the Optimization of Total Task Allocations in a Multirobot System
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Optimizing human–robot task allocation using a simulation tool based on standardized work descriptions
TL;DR: An approach to use standardized work description for automated procedure generation of mobile assistant robots is introduced and an optimized human–robot task allocation is found, in which the tasks are allocated in an intelligent and comprehensible way.
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A Systematic Review of Robotics Research in Support of In-Home Care for Older Adults
TL;DR: The results from a systematic review of the state-of-the-art in home robotics research for caring for older adults and the current research trends and technologies used in each category are presented.
Market-Based Task Assignment for Cooperative Timing Missions in Dynamic Environments
TL;DR: The mathematical convergence and scalability analyses show that the proposed algorithms have a polynomial time complexity, and numerical simulation results support the scalability of the proposed algorithm in terms of the runtime and communication burden.
58
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