提出三种新算法,让机器人集群在未知环境中动态分配任务。
Swarm Algorithms for Dynamic Task Allocation in Unknown Environments
- 用传播任务信息的分布式算法替代随机搜索
- 任务出现较慢时,效率优于自然界的莱维飞行策略
- 混合与分工策略在中低任务速率下表现更优
机器人集群在搜救、灾害响应和自组装等场景中有广泛应用,这些应用可抽象为环境中的任务分配问题。现有算法多依赖任务位置先验知识或静态任务集,而本文在任务动态出现且位置未知的离散通用模型下,提出了三种新型集群任务分配算法。当任务出现缓慢时,基于任务信息传播的分布式算法比莱维随机游走(自然界中高效搜索策略)更具效率。我们还提出分工算法:部分代理使用信息传播,其余使用莱维游走;以及混合算法,使每个代理在两种策略间动态切换。结果表明,在低至中等任务速率下,分工与混合算法均优于单一策略。当任务快速出现时,莱维游走策略表现相当甚至更优。本研究对比了多种算法在不同任务速率下的性能,并提供了根据环境参数优化算法的见解。
原文摘要 · Abstract (English)
Robot swarms, systems of many robots that operate in a distributed fashion, have many applications in areas such as search-and-rescue, natural disaster response, and self-assembly. Several of these applications can be abstracted to the general problem of task allocation in an environment, in which robots must assign themselves to and complete tasks. While several algorithms for task allocation have been proposed, most of them assume either prior knowledge of task locations or a static set of tasks. Operating under a discrete general model where tasks dynamically appear in unknown locations, we present three new swarm algorithms for task allocation. We demonstrate that when tasks appear slowly, our variant of a distributed algorithm based on propagating task information completes tasks more efficiently than a Levy random walk algorithm, which is a strategy used by many organisms in nature to efficiently search an environment. We also propose a division of labor algorithm where some agents are using our algorithm based on propagating task information while the remaining agents are using the Levy random walk algorithm. Finally, we introduce a hybrid algorithm where each agent dynamically switches between using propagated task information and following a Levy random walk. We show that our division of labor and hybrid algorithms can perform better than both our algorithm based on propagated task information and the Levy walk algorithm, especially at low and medium task rates. When tasks appear fast, we observe the Levy random walk strategy performs as well or better when compared to these novel approaches. Our work demonstrates the relative performance of these algorithms on a variety of task rates and also provide insight into optimizing our algorithms based on environment parameters.
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