A Formalism for Specifying Capability-based Task Allocation in MAS

Abstract

Task allocation, as an important issue in multi-agent systems (MAS), is defined as allocating the tasks to the agents such that maximum tasks are performed in minimum time. The vast range of application domains, such as scheduling, cooperation in crisis management, and project management, deal with the task allocation problem. Despite the plethora of algorithms that are proposed to solve this problem in different application domains, research on proposing a formalism for this problem is scarce. Such a formalism can be used as a way for better understanding and analyzing the behavior of real-world systems. In this paper, we propose a new formalism for specifying capability-based task allocation in MAS. The formalism can be used in different application domains to help domain experts better analyze and test their algorithms with more precision. To show the applicability of the formalism, we consider two algorithms as the case studies and formalize the inputs and outputs of these algorithms using the proposed formalism. The results indicate that our formalism is promising for specifying the capability-based task allocation in MAS at a proper level of abstraction.