Partially-Decoupled Service Agent - Transport Agent Task Allocation and Scheduling

Abstract

We present an approach to performing efficient schedule generation of a heterogeneous team of autonomous agents in a service agent - transport agent scenario where the task allocation and scheduling components are partially-decoupled. In the scenario, service agents must perform tasks at a number of locations. The agents are free to move between locations, however the agents may also be transported throughout the region by a limited number of faster-moving transport agents. The goal of the problem is to plan a schedule of service agent and transport agent actions such that all locations are serviced in the shortest amount of time. While in previous work we formulated the problem as a holistic mixed-integer linear program, we present a novel method to solve the problem in a hierarchical and partially-decoupled manner for faster optimization and to require less information to be processed and communicated in a centralized manner to perform the schedule planning. The original solution method required up to 20 minutes to obtain an efficient solution. The new methodology, using hierarchical task allocation and a bidding-based scheduling algorithm, can create an efficient solution in seconds.