Task Assignment Algorithm Research Articles

Preference-Matched Multitask Assignment for Group Socialization under Mobile Crowdsensing.

Mobile crowdsensing (MCS) has been an emerging sensing paradigm in recent years, which uses a sensing platform for real-time processing to support various services for the Internet of Things (IoT) and promote the development of IoT. As an important component of MCS, how to design task assignment algorithms to cope with the coexistence of multiple concurrent heterogeneous tasks in group-oriented social relationships while satisfying the impact of users' preferences on heterogeneous multitask assignment and solving the preference matching problem under heterogeneous tasks, is one of the most pressing issues. In this paper, a new algorithm, group-oriented adjustable bidding task assignment (GO-ABTA), is considered to solve the group-oriented bilateral preference-matching problem. First, the initial leaders and their collaborative groups in the social network are selected by group-oriented collaboration, and then the preference assignment of task requesters and users is modeled as a stable preference-matching problem. Then, a tunable bidding task assignment process is completed based on preference matching under budget constraints. Finally, the individual reasonableness, stability, and convergence of the proposed algorithm are demonstrated. The effectiveness of the proposed algorithm and its superiority to other algorithms are verified by simulation results.

Multi-UAV Search and Rescue with Enhanced A ∗ Algorithm Path Planning in 3D Environment

The unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV) are now widely used in search and rescue (SAR) missions to locate casualties and survey terrain. To solve the problem of long calculation time and large memory usage of the UAV obstacle-avoidance path-planning algorithm in cooperative tasks, this paper proposes a method that combines the A ∗ algorithm and the task allocation algorithm to achieve a faster and more effective path-planning method. First, the environment is displayed in the form of a grid. Then, the enhanced algorithm divides the task area for UAVs. Finally, each UAV performs SAR path planning in the mission area. The tasks of mapping the environment and searching for target points by UAV swarms are discussed in this study. Our research enhances A ∗ algorithms for generating the shortest collision-free paths for drone swarms. Further, we evaluate the algorithm via simulating the task assignment algorithm and path-planning algorithm of a 3D map and 2D map. Compared with the traditional A ∗ algorithm, the results demonstrate that the enhanced algorithm is effective in the scenario.

Research on a hybrid neural network task assignment algorithm for solving multi-constraint heterogeneous autonomous underwater robot swarms.

Studying the task assignment problem of multiple underwater robots has a broad effect on the field of underwater exploration and can be helpful in military, fishery, and energy. However, to the best of our knowledge, few studies have focused on multi-constrained underwater detection task assignment for heterogeneous autonomous underwater vehicle (AUV) clusters with autonomous decision-making capabilities, and the current popular heuristic methods have difficulty obtaining optimal cluster unit task assignment results. In this paper, a fast graph pointer network (FGPN) method, which is a hybrid of graph pointer network (GPN) and genetic algorithm, is proposed to solve the task assignment problem of detection/communication AUV clusters, and to improve the assignment efficiency on the basis of ensuring the accuracy of task assignment. A two-stage detection algorithm is used. First, the task nodes are clustered and pre-grouped according to the communication distance. Then, according to the clustering results, a neural network model based on graph pointer network is used to solve the local task assignment results. A large-scale cluster cooperative task assignment problem and a detection/communication cooperative work mode are proposed, which transform the cooperative cooperation problem of heterogeneous AUV clusters into a Multiple Traveling salesman problem (MTSP) for solving. We also conducted a large number of experiments to verify the effectiveness of the algorithm. The experimental results show that the solution efficiency of the method proposed in this paper is better than the traditional heuristic method on the scale of 300/500/750/1,000/1,500/2,000 task nodes, and the solution quality is similar to the result of the heuristic method. We hope that our ideas and methods for solving the large-scale cooperative task assignment problem can be used as a reference for large-scale task assignment problems and other related problems in other fields.

ACTA: Autonomy and Coordination Task Assignment in Spatial Crowdsourcing Platforms

Spatial platforms have become increasingly important in people's daily lives. Task assignment is a critical problem in these platforms that matches real-time orders to suitable workers. Most studies only focus on independent platforms that are in a competitive relationship. Recently, an emerging service model was proposed, where orders are shared with multiple similar platforms. It aims to solve the imbalance between supply and demand through cooperation. However, it faces the following main challenges: 1) Coordinating independent platforms fairly based on the limited information; 2) Building a task assignment process with personalized algorithms. In this paper, we study real applications and define the Autonomy and Coordination Task Assignment problem (ACTA) to maximize the global revenue and fairness. We propose a framework to solve ACTA that consists of public order sending, local matching, global conflict adjustment and results notification. The framework uses mid-products and public data to train a revenue estimation model to coordinate participants. We further propose dynamic weight task assignment algorithms to guarantee fairness. Through the experiments, we prove that the platforms can obtain higher revenue, which shows the effectiveness and efficiency of our work.

UAV Cluster Task Assignment Algorithm Based on Improved Artificial Gorilla Troops Optimizer

UAV Cluster Task Assignment Algorithm Based on Improved Artificial Gorilla Troops Optimizer

Automatic collaborative water surface coverage and cleaning strategy of UAV and USVs

As the problem of surface garbage pollution becomes more serious, it is necessary to improve the efficiency of garbage inspection and picking rather than traditional manual methods. Due to lightness, unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) can traverse the entire water surface in a short time through their flight field of view. In addition, unmanned surface vessels (USVs) can provide battery replacement and pick up garbage. In this paper, we innovatively establish a system framework for the collaboration between UAV and USVs, and develop an automatic water cleaning strategy. First, on the basis of the partition principle, we propose a collaborative coverage path algorithm based on UAV off-site takeoff and landing to achieve global inspection. Second, we design a task scheduling and assignment algorithm for USVs to balance the garbage loads based on the particle swarm optimization algorithm. Finally, based on the swarm intelligence algorithm, we also design an autonomous obstacle avoidance path planning algorithm for USVs to realize autonomous navigation and collaborative cleaning. The system can simultaneously perform inspection and clearance tasks under certain constraints. The simulation results show that the proposed algorithms have higher generality and flexibility while effectively improving computational efficiency and reducing actual cleaning costs compared with other schemes.

An improved fish swarm algorithm to assign tasks and cut down on latency in cloud computing

Various researches have been conducted to discover the machinery that led to the evolvement of non-symmetric formation of groups by uncountable marine animals. The huge of tasks comes per unit of time brought obstacles to assign each to particular server, while task assignment have needed a fast strategy to make decision. Artificial fish affect the environment through their behavior and the behavior of their peers. Creating a synthetic fish model has two parts: variables and functions which could be used for task assignment. This paper present improved fish swarm algorithm (IFSA) for task assignment to reduce the latency in cloud computing that could achieve one green computing goals. The research trying to reduce the pending job numbers compared with exist research.

5G Smart Sensor Network-Based e-Commerce Investment Risk Management System for SMEs

The rapid development of Internet technology in the new era has led to the prosperous development of the e-commerce industry, and more and more traditional retail enterprises are transforming into e-commerce enterprises in line with the development of the times to survive. Based on the relevant financial risk management theories, this paper designs an e-commerce investment risk management system for small and medium-sized enterprises based on the 5G intelligent sensor network, identify the financial risks arising from the e-commerce model, and takes appropriate countermeasures to manage the identified risks. For the optimal coverage problem of homogeneous terminals in the subnetwork of a smart sensing network, this paper introduces the concept of area coverage contribution, transforms the problem of selecting the optimal coverage subset in a large area into the problem of selecting the substrate particles, and organically combines the particle swarm algorithm in the bionic algorithm to consider the network survival period, area sensing coverage, and iteration cost for the hierarchical distributed large-scale IoT architecture. A minimum coverage subset dormancy scheduling algorithm based on homogeneous terminals is proposed. The simulation results are compared with the greedy algorithm and the multioptimized target task assignment algorithm, and it is demonstrated that this algorithm can consider multiple optimization objectives such as energy balance, scheduling cycle, timeout rate, network survival cycle, and system reliability and perform well in the case of large-scale deployment. Finally, an appropriate financial risk evaluation model is constructed to objectively evaluate the identified financial risks, and targeted financial risk control measures and suggestions are proposed based on four aspects: financing, investment, operation, and others.

Quantum-Inspired Evolutionary Algorithm for Optimal Service-Matching Task Assignment

This paper proposes a quantum-inspired evolutionary algorithm (QiEA) to solve an optimal service-matching task-assignment problem. Our proposed algorithm comes with the advantage of generating always feasible population individuals and, thus, eliminating the necessity for a repair step. That is, with respect to other quantum-inspired evolutionary algorithms, our proposed QiEA algorithm presents a new way of collapsing the quantum state that integrates the problem constraints in order to avoid later adjusting operations of the system to make it feasible. This results in lower computations and also faster convergence. We compare our proposed QiEA algorithm with three commonly used benchmark methods: the greedy algorithm, Hungarian method and Simplex, in five different case studies. The results show that the quantum approach presents better scalability and interesting properties that can be used in a wider class of assignment problems where the matching is not perfect.

GAIMMO: A Grade-Driven Auction-Based Incentive Mechanism With Multiple Objectives for Crowdsourcing Managed by Blockchain

Blockchain has been applied for decentralized crowdsourcing management by deploying a number of miners to reach a consensus on crowdsourced task allocation and payment decision. In a blockchain-based crowdsourcing system (BCS), incentive becomes essential to motivate the participation and cooperation of all system entities. However, existing literature scarcely investigates how to motivate heterogeneous crowdsourcers, workers, and miners simultaneously toward satisfying multiple objectives without the support of centralized management. In this article, we propose GAIMMO, a novel grade-driven auction-based incentive mechanism for BCS with multiple objectives in mind: crowdsourcer utility maximization, social welfare maximization, social grade maximization, and social cost minimization. Concretely, we propose a grade-based task sorting (GTS) algorithm to determine the service priority of heterogeneous crowdsourcers in order to motivate their cooperative behaviors, which consequently maximizes crowdsourcer utility when combining with the carefully designed utility functions of other system entities. We propose a grade-based utility function of workers and employ a hierarchical premium-based task assignment (PTA) algorithm to realize social welfare maximization, social grade maximization, and social cost minimization. We further propose a fixed-grade-sum and grade-based reward-sharing (FGSGRS) method to encourage fast block generation and motivate high-grade miners without damaging the profits of the crowdsourcers. We conduct simulation-based experiments to show the effectiveness and advance of our proposed incentive mechanism in stimulating the participation willingness of high-grade system entities and achieving the multiple objectives.

Optimization Strategy Analysis of Intelligent Product Service System Based on Computer Simulation Technology

In order to solve the needs of a large number of users and the efficiency of user service requirements, an optimization strategy analysis method of intelligent product service system based on computer simulation technology is proposed. Aiming at the two challenges of massive requests and efficient service in the network intelligent service system, the characteristics of the network intelligent service system are analyzed, and the network intelligent service system is formally modeled as an agent system. The performance modeling, performance evaluation, and performance optimization methods of the network intelligent service system are proposed. In order to solve this massive demand, the performance modeling of the network intelligent service system is carried out based on queuing theory. This paper proposes a task assignment algorithm for the network intelligent service system. Through the application of these results, the processing efficiency of the entire medical insurance application system has been greatly improved, and the average completion time of all businesses has been shortened by 59%, providing new ideas for optimizing service methods and improving service quality.

Microservices architectural based secure and failure aware task assignment schemes in fog‐cloud assisted Internet of things

The Internet of Things (IoT) paradigm has applications in many domains and is growing these days progressively. The applications are e-business, e-healthcare, and e-transportation. Recently, the container microservices-based Mobile Cloud Computing (MCC) has gained popularity, a lightweight framework compared to the monolithic virtual machine-based system. MCC combines fog nodes or cloud nodes with a base station to run the applications. However, storing the sensitive data of IoT applications on the untrusted nodes and failure of services are critical challenges in the existing architecture. This study proposes a novel microservices-based by combining fog and cloud services with efficient schemes. The first scheme is the Latency Aware Task Assignment Algorithm, which determines the optimal assignment of tasks to minimize the makespan of all applications. The second scheme is Fully Homomorphism Encryption, which ensures data security before an offload to any external assistance for execution. The final one is the Failure Aware, which handles any transient failure during application execution in the architecture. The experimental results show that the recommended architecture improved resource utilization, and the proposed schemes satisfied the security demand while reducing the makespan of applications.

Research on Multi-AUVs Data Acquisition System of Underwater Acoustic Communication Network.

In order to meet the needs of large-scale underwater operations, the underwater acoustic communication network emerged, marking a historic moment. At the same time, the development of artificial intelligence has promoted the application of intelligent underwater robots in large-scale underwater operations, and the research on related algorithms has been gradually promoted. Due to the complexity of underwater operations and the difficulty of replacing batteries, the energy efficiency of intelligent underwater robots is particularly important in multi-AUVs data acquisition systems. In view of the energy consumption of multi-AUVs data acquisition systems in water acoustic cluster networks, this paper proposed the AE (A*-Energy) algorithm for multi-AUVs task assignment and path planning. Through the simulation experiment, it was proved that the AE algorithm proposed in this paper can effectively reduce the energy consumption of multi-AUVs data acquisition systems and has good energy efficiency.

Dynamic Delayed-Decision Task Assignment Under Spatial-Temporal Constraints in Mobile Crowdsensing

Task assignment is a research focus of Mobile Crowd Sensing(MCS). On the arrival of a sensing task, most researches use the way of immediate recruitment to assign the task, ignoring the impact of the task assignment time point. However, the arrival time and start time of a task are often different, hence an earlier assignment decision leads to rough predictions of users reaching the destination of task, which reduces task completion ratio and budget utilization ratio. In order to solve this problem, in this paper we propose a dynamic delayed-decision task assignment method. Firstly, we formalize a new task assignment problem considering the time point of task assignment, in which each selected user can complete as many tasks as possible within the given spatial-temporal constraints, rather than only one task, and propose a method of decision time point selection using a delayed-decision strategy to deal with the tasks of dynamically arriving at the MCS platform. Secondly, we propose two mobility prediction methods to efficiently compute the probabilities of users reaching the destinations before the end time of the sensing tasks, and then propose the related task assignment algorithms, namely with TDMar and TDMeta, which use the proposed semi-Markov prediction and meta-path prediction, respectively. Finally, by using large-scale real data sets, we evaluate the two algorithms and compare them with the baseline methods. The results show that using delayed-decision strategy could evidently improve the task completion ratio and budget utilization ratio, and also decrease the user singleness.

Online Stable Task Assignment in Opportunistic Mobile Crowdsensing With Uncertain Trajectories

In opportunistic mobile crowdsensing, participants (workers) accept to carry out the requested sensing tasks only if they are already close to or within the regions of interest. Thus, the existence of an assignment opportunity between a workertask pair strictly depends on whether or not the worker will visit the task region. However, when worker trajectories are uncertain and hence not known in advance, existing solutions fail to produce an effective task assignment. Besides, a satisfactory task assignment should respect the preferences and capacity constraints of workers and task requesters, which are generally neglected in literature. In this study, we address all of these issues together and propose novel task assignment algorithms for different settings, which we prove to be optimal in terms of preference-awareness (or stability). Extensive simulations performed on both synthetic and real data sets validate our theoretical results, and demonstrate that the proposed algorithms significantly outperform the existing solutions in terms of preference-awareness and average quality of sensing attained in the final task assignment in almost all scenarios.

Cooperative task assignment in spatial crowdsourcing via multi-agent deep reinforcement learning

With the rapid development of mobile Internet, spatial crowdsourcing (SC) has become an emerging paradigm with many applications. As a key challenge in SC, the problem of task assignment has attracted extensive research. However, most previous work focus on the single mode setting where cooperation among workers is either allowed or prohibited. Moreover, only short-term benefit of either workers or requesters is considered separately. To address these issues, we first propose a new spatial crowdsourcing scenario that permits cooperation with no mandate among workers and tasks. Furthermore, we propose a multi-agent deep reinforcement learning (MADRL) solution for SC. Specifically, we extend the Advantage Actor–Critic (A2C) algorithm to multi-agent settings, and design a reward function that considers both local and global return. Through the game between agents, we generate a task assignment scheme that considers both workers’ and requesters’ long-term benefit. In order to improve the performance of our model, we further introduce the attention mechanism to guide information sharing between agents. We use simulations to conduct experimental evaluation on both synthetic and real-world datasets. Experimental results show that our proposed method outperforms other state-of-the-art task assignment algorithms in terms of worker profitability rate and task completion rate.

A Task Assignment Method Based on User-Union Clustering and Individual Preferences in Mobile Crowdsensing

Mobile crowdsensing (MCS) offers a novel paradigm for large-scale sensing with the proliferation of smartphones. Task assignment is a critical problem in mobile crowdsensing (MCS), where service providers attempt to recruit a group of brilliant users to complete the sensing task at a limited cost. However, selecting an appropriate set of users with high quality and low cost is challenging. Existing works of task assignment ignore the data redundancy of large-scale users and the individual preference of service providers, resulting in a significant workload on the sensing platform and inaccurate assignment results. To tackle this issue, we propose a task assignment method based on user-union clustering and individual preferences, which considers the influence of clustering data quality and preference-based sensing cost. Firstly, we design a user-union clustering algorithm (UCA) by defining user similarity and setting user scale, which aims to balance user distribution, reduce data redundancy, and improve the accuracy of high-quality user aggregation. Then, we consider individual preferences of service providers and construct a preference-based task assignment algorithm (PTA) to achieve the diversified sensing cost control needs. To evaluate the performance of the proposed solutions, extensive simulations are conducted. The results demonstrate that our proposed solutions outperform the baseline algorithm, which realizes the individual preference-based task assignment under the premise of ensuring high-quality data.

Task assignment in ground-to-air confrontation based on multiagent deep reinforcement learning

The scale of ground-to-air confrontation task assignments is large and needs to deal with many concurrent task assignments and random events. Aiming at the problems where existing task assignment methods are applied to ground-to-air confrontation, there is low efficiency in dealing with complex tasks, and there are interactive conflicts in multiagent systems. This study proposes a multiagent architecture based on a one-general agent with multiple narrow agents (OGMN) to reduce task assignment conflicts. Considering the slow speed of traditional dynamic task assignment algorithms, this paper proposes the proximal policy optimization for task assignment of general and narrow agents (PPO-TAGNA) algorithm. The algorithm based on the idea of the optimal assignment strategy algorithm and combined with the training framework of deep reinforcement learning (DRL) adds a multihead attention mechanism and a stage reward mechanism to the bilateral band clipping PPO algorithm to solve the problem of low training efficiency. Finally, simulation experiments are carried out in the digital battlefield. The multiagent architecture based on OGMN combined with the PPO-TAGNA algorithm can obtain higher rewards faster and has a higher win ratio. By analyzing agent behavior, the efficiency, superiority and rationality of resource utilization of this method are verified.

Decentralized route-planning for multi-vehicle teams to satisfy a subclass of linear temporal logic specifications

Linear temporal logic (LTL) formulae are widely used to provide high level behavioral specifications on mobile robots. We propose a decentralized route-planning method for a networked team of mobile robots to satisfy a common (global) LTL specification. The global specification is assumed to be a conjunction of multiple formulae, each of which is treated as a task to be assigned to one or more vehicles. The vehicle kinematic model consists of two modes: a hover mode and a constant-speed forward motion mode with bounded steering rate. The proposed method leverages the consensus-based bundle algorithm for decentralized task assignment, thereby decomposing the global specification into local specifications for each vehicle. We develop a new algorithm to assign collaborative tasks: those simultaneously assigned to multiple vehicles. Rewards in the proposed task assignment algorithm are computed using the so-called lifted graph, which ensures the satisfaction of minimum turn radius constraints on vehicular motion. This algorithm synchronizes the vehicles’ routes with minimum waiting durations. The proposed method is compared against a multi-vehicle task assignment algorithm from the literature, which we extend to apply for satisfying LTL specifications. The proposed route-planning method is demonstrated via numerical simulation examples and a hardware implementation on networked single-board computers.

Joint Dynamic Task Offloading and Resource Scheduling for WPT Enabled Space-Air-Ground Power Internet of Things

The Space-Air-Ground Power Internet of Things (SAG-PIoT) can meet the communication needs of Power Internet of Things (PIoT) devices in localities with insufficient ground base station coverage. Considering that the battery capacity of PIoT devices is limited and difficult to be replaced, we use unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) to assist wireless power transmission (WPT) in the SAG-PIoT to ensure the network service quality and safe and stable operation of PIoT. In this paper, we put forward a novel WPT enabled SAG-PIoT architecture, based on which we investigate the dynamic task offloading and resource scheduling, and propose a joint online optimization algorithm for task assignment, local computing resource allocation, association control and UAV computing resource allocation to minimize the long-term time-averaged network operation cost. Since the coupling of task offloading and resource scheduling in the long-term stochastic optimization problem, it is decoupled into three subproblems to be solved separately using Lyapunov optimization. Moreover, we analyze the stability and sustainability of the proposed algorithm and reveal the tradeoff between the network stability and optimal network operation cost. Simulations show that the proposed algorithm has advantageous performances with respect of network stability, energy consumption and network operation cost compared to other benchmark algorithms.