Integrated Mission Specification and Task Allocation for Robot Teams - Design and Implementation

As the capabilities, range of missions, and the size of robot teams increase, the ability for a human operator to account for all the factors in these complex scenarios can become exceedingly difficult. Our previous research has studied the use of case-based reasoning (CBR) tools to assist a user in the generation of multi-robot missions. These tools, however, typically assume that the robots available for the mission are of the same type (i.e., homogeneous). We loosen this assumption through the integration of contract-net protocol (CNP) based task allocation coupled with a CBR-based mission specification wizard. Two alternative designs are explored for combining case-based mission specification and CNP-based team allocation as well as the tradeoffs that result from the selection of one of these approaches over the other.

[1]  Maja J. Mataric,et al.  Sold!: auction methods for multirobot coordination , 2002, IEEE Trans. Robotics Autom..

[2]  Maja J. Mataric,et al.  Pusher-watcher: an approach to fault-tolerant tightly-coupled robot coordination , 2002, Proceedings 2002 IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (Cat. No.02CH37292).

[3]  Nidhi Kalra,et al.  Market-Based Multirobot Coordination: A Survey and Analysis , 2006, Proceedings of the IEEE.

[4]  Rachid Alami,et al.  Plan-Based Multi-robot Cooperation , 2001, Advances in Plan-Based Control of Robotic Agents.

[5]  Claude Le Pape.  A combination of centralized and distributed methods for multi-agent planning and scheduling , 1990, ICRA.

[6]  Ronald C. Arkin,et al.  Usability evaluation of high-level user assistance for robot mission specification , 2004, IEEE Transactions on Systems, Man, and Cybernetics, Part C (Applications and Reviews).

[7]  Lynne E. Parker,et al.  ALLIANCE: an architecture for fault tolerant multirobot cooperation , 1998, IEEE Trans. Robotics Autom..

[8]  Rachid Alami,et al.  A distributed tasks allocation scheme in multi-UAV context , 2004, IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation, 2004. Proceedings. ICRA '04. 2004.

[9]  Reid G. Smith,et al.  The Contract Net Protocol: High-Level Communication and Control in a Distributed Problem Solver , 1980, IEEE Transactions on Computers.

[10]  Sanem Sariel,et al.  A Distributed Multi-robot Cooperation Framework for Real Time Task Achievement , 2006, DARS.

[11]  David E. Kieras,et al.  The GOMS family of user interface analysis techniques: comparison and contrast , 1996, TCHI.

[12]  Anthony Stentz,et al.  Multi-robot exploration controlled by a market economy , 2002, Proceedings 2002 IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (Cat. No.02CH37292).

[13]  Alan R. Wagner,et al.  Integrated Mission Specification and Task Allocation for Robot Teams - Part 2: Testing and Evaluation , 2006 .

[14]  Alan R. Wagner,et al.  Integrated Mission Specification and Task Allocation for Robot Teams-Testing and Evaluation , 2007 .

[15]  Rachid Alami,et al.  M+: a scheme for multi-robot cooperation through negotiated task allocation and achievement , 1999, Proceedings 1999 IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (Cat. No.99CH36288C).

[16]  Ronald C. Arkin,et al.  Evaluating the Usability of Robot Programming Toolsets , 1998, Int. J. Robotics Res..

[17]  Lynne E. Parker,et al.  Heterogeneous multi-robot cooperation , 1994 .

[18]  Alan R. Wagner,et al.  Multi-robot User Interface Modeling , 2006, DARS.

[19]  Ronald C. Arkin,et al.  Usability evaluation of an automated mission repair mechanism for mobile robot mission specification , 2006, HRI '06.

[20]  Ronald C. Arkin,et al.  Multiagent Mission Specification and Execution , 1997, Auton. Robots.

[21]  Ronald C. Arkin,et al.  An Behavior-based Robotics , 1998 .

[22]  David Leake,et al.  Case-Based Reasoning: Experiences, Lessons and Future Directions , 1996 .