Heterogeneous Coalition Formation and Scheduling with Multi-Skilled Robots

Ashay Aswale, Carlo Pinciroli

Abstract:

We present an approach to task scheduling in
heterogeneous multi-robot systems. In our setting, the tasks to
complete require diverse skills. We assume that each robot is
multi-skilled, i.e., each robot offers a subset of the possible skills.
This makes the formation of heterogeneous teams (coalitions)
a requirement for task completion. We present two centralized
algorithms to schedule robots across tasks and to form suitable
coalitions, assuming stochastic travel times across tasks. The
coalitions are dynamic, in that the robots form and disband
coalitions as the schedule is executed. The first algorithm we
propose guarantees optimality, but its run-time is acceptable
only for small problem instances. The second algorithm we
propose can tackle large problems with short run-times, and is
based on a heuristic approach that typically reaches 1x-2x of
the optimal solution cost.