Title
Heuristics-Based Multi-Agent Task Allocation for Resilient Operations
Abstract
Multi-Agent Task Allocation is a pre-requisite for many autonomous, real-world systems because of the need for intelligent task assignment amongst a team for maximum efficiency. Similarly, agent failure, task, failure, and a lack of state information are inherent challenges when operating in complex environments. Many existing solutions make simplifying assumptions regarding the modeling of these factors, e.g., Markovian state information. However, it is not clear that this is always the appropriate approach or that results from these approaches are necessarily representative of performance in the natural world. In this work, we demonstrate that there exists a class of problems for which non-Markovian state modeling is beneficial. Furthermore, we present and characterize a novel heuristic for task allocation that incorporates realistic state and uncertainty modeling in order to improve performance. Our quantitative analysis, when tested in a simulated search and rescue (SAR) mission, shows a decrease in performance of more than 57% when a representative method with Markovian assumptions is tested in a non-Markovian setting. Our novel heuristic has shown an improvement in performance of 3-15%, in the same non-Markovian setting, by modeling probabilistic failure and making fewer assumptions.
Year
DOI
Venue
2019
10.1109/SSRR.2019.8848939
2019 IEEE International Symposium on Safety, Security, and Rescue Robotics (SSRR)
Keywords
Field
DocType
Markovian state information,natural world,nonMarkovian state modeling,novel heuristic,realistic state,uncertainty modeling,Markovian assumptions,nonMarkovian setting,modeling probabilistic failure,resilient operations,pre-requisite,real-world systems,intelligent task assignment,agent failure,inherent challenges,complex environments,heuristics-based multiagent task allocation,imulated search and rescue mission,SAR
Heuristic,Mathematical optimization,Markov process,Search and rescue,Existential quantification,State information,Simulation,Computer science,Heuristics,Probabilistic logic,Maximum efficiency
Conference
ISSN
ISBN
Citations 
2374-3247
978-1-7281-0779-0
0
PageRank 
References 
Authors
0.34
15
3
Name
Order
Citations
PageRank
Jason Gregory1104.32
Sarah Al-Hussaini201.69
Satyandra K Gupta368777.11