TAMER: Task Allocation in Multi-robot Systems Through an Entity-Relationship Model

Abstract

Multi-robot task allocation (MRTA) problems have been studied extensively in the past decades. As a result, several classifications have been proposed in the literature targeting different aspects of MRTA, with often a few commonalities between them. The goal of this paper is twofold. First, a comprehensive overview of early work on existing MRTA taxonomies is provided, focusing on their differences and similarities. Second, the MRTA problem is modelled using an Entity-Relationship (ER) conceptual formalism to provide a structured representation of the most relevant aspects, including the ones proposed within previous taxonomies. Such representation has the advantage of (i) representing MRTA problems in a systematic way, (ii) providing a formalism that can be easily transformed into a software infrastructure, and (iii) setting the baseline for the definition of knowledge bases, that can be used for automated reasoning in MRTA problems.