Dynamic Task Assignment

Most applications require subgroups of robots to perform different tasks. To support this, I designed a set of four distributed algorithms for dynamic task assignment. Given an input of desired task ratios, each robot selects a task such that the final global distribution best matches the input distribution. Although all four algorithms have the same final goal, each of them represents different trade-offs in running time, communications usage, and accuracy of the final result. These trade-offs were interesting, and pointed towards a model of conserved quantities in multi-robot computation.

Publications

"Dynamic Task Assignment in Robot Swarms"
   James McLurkin and Daniel Yamins, Robotics: Science and Systems Conference, June 8, 2005

James McLurkin