A comparison of coordinated planning methods for cooperating rovers

Rabideau, Gregg; Estlin, Tara; Chien, Steve; Barrett, Anthony

doi:10.2514/6.1999-4600

Cited by 27 publications

(32 citation statements)

References 4 publications

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“…The efficiency of auction-based methods has been demonstrated experimentally [1]- [9], but there has been little theoretical study [8]. In this paper we make the following contributions: (1) we suggest a generic framework for auctionbased multi-robot routing, and (2) we derive and analyze six bidding rules for three team objectives (minimizing total cost, maximum cost, or average service cost), specifically, we provide lower and upper bounds on their performance relative to optimal performance.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Finally, the MINIAVE objective is also known as the Traveling Repairman Problem (or Minimum Latency Problem) and is approximable to a constant factor [16]. Robotics researchers have studied the MINISUM [2], [7]- [9] objective extensively, but only occasionally the MINIMAX [1], [9] and MINIAVE [9] objectives.…”

Section: Related Workmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The travel distances and travel times between locations often satisfy these assumptions in an environment with or without obstacles. The objective of multi-robot routing is to find an allocation of targets to robots and a path for each robot that visits all targets allocated to it so that a team objective is optimized 1 . In this research, we study three team objectives:…”

Section: Multi-robot Routingmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…In this paper we make the following contributions: (1) we suggest a generic framework for auctionbased multi-robot routing, and (2) we derive and analyze six bidding rules for three team objectives (minimizing total cost, maximum cost, or average service cost), specifically, we provide lower and upper bounds on their performance relative to optimal performance. This is the first time that auction methods are shown to offer theoretical guarantees for such a variety of bidding rules and team objectives.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 3 more Smart Citations

Auction-Based Multi-Robot Routing

Lagoudakis¹,

Markakis²,

Kempe³

et al. 2005

Robotics: Science and Systems I

212

193

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Abstract-Recently auction methods have been investigated as effective, decentralized methods for multi-robot coordination. Experimental research has shown great potential, but has not been complemented yet by theoretical analysis. In this paper we contribute a theoretical analysis of the performance of auction methods for multi-robot routing. We suggest a generic framework for auction-based multi-robot routing and analyze a variety of bidding rules for different team objectives. This is the first time that auction methods are shown to offer theoretical guarantees for such a variety of bidding rules and team objectives. I. INTRODUCTIONRobot teams are increasingly becoming a popular alternative to single robots for a variety of difficult robotic tasks, such as planetary exploration or planetary base assembly. Robot teams offer many advantages over single robots: robustness (due to redundancy), efficiency (due to parallelism), and flexibility (due to reconfigurability). However, an important factor for the success of a robot team is the ability to coordinate the team members in an effective way. Coordination involves the allocation and execution of individual tasks through an efficient, decentralized mechanism.In this paper, we focus on multi-robot routing, a class of problems where a team of mobile robots must visit a set of locations for some purpose (e.g., delivery or acquisition) with routes that optimize certain criteria (e.g., minimization of consumed energy, completion time, or average latency). Examples include search-and-rescue in areas hit by disasters, surveillance of a facility, placement of sensors in a sensor network, delivery of parts, and measurements over a wide area. Such routing problems, including Vehicle Routing Problems (VRPs) and several variants of the Traveling Salesman Problem (TSP), have been widely studied from a centralized point of view in the operations research literature, and more recently in robotics with a focus on decentralized approaches.Even in decentralized multi-robot coordination, some information should be communicated between the robots to facilitate efficient performance; it is desirable to enable good decision making while communicating as little information as possible. One promising approach of this type is the use of market-based mechanisms, in particular, auction-based methods, where the communicated information consists of bids robots place on various tasks and coordination is achieved by a process similar to winner determination in auctions.The efficiency of auction-based methods has been demonstrated experimentally [1]-[9], but there has been little theoretical study [8]. In this paper we make the following contributions: (1) we suggest a generic framework for auctionbased multi-robot routing, and (2) we derive and analyze six bidding rules for three team objectives (minimizing total cost, maximum cost, or average service cost), specifically, we provide lower and upper bounds on their performance relative to optimal performance. This is the first time that auction...

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Related Workmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Multi-robot Routingmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 2 more Smart Citations

Auction-Based Multi-Robot Routing

Lagoudakis¹,

Markakis²,

Kempe³

et al. 2005

Robotics: Science and Systems I

212

193

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…(Hettiarachchi and Spears, 2005;Wagner and Bruckstein, 2001;Steels, 1990) or (Arkin, 1990;Mataric, 1992;Haynes and Sen, 1986) for biology inspired designs (behavior based control models, flocking and dispersing models and predator-prey approaches, respectively), (Gerkey and Mataric, 2002;Rabideau et al, 1999;Thayer et al, 2000) for economics applications and (Chevallier and Payandeh, 2000) for a physics inspired approach).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

COLLABORATIVE EXPLORATION IN GRID DOMAINS - Constructive Conjecture of a Polynomial Time Complexity

Altshuler

Bruckstein

Wagner³

2009

Proceedings of the 6th International Conference on Informatics in Control, Automation and Robotics

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Abstract:This work discusses the problem of exploration of an unknown environment using a collaborative group of simple agents. While this problem was known to be of a non-polynomial time complexity, it was speculated in the past that in grid domains the completion time of this problem is much lower (although analytic proofs were not available hitherto). In this work we present a preliminary result concerning a constructive analytic constraint for guaranteeing that the time complexity of this problem in grid domains is indeed polynomial.

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Market-Based Multirobot Coordination Using Task Abstraction

Zlot

Stentz

2006

Springer Tracts in Advanced Robotics

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A comparison of coordinated planning methods for cooperating rovers

Cited by 27 publications

References 4 publications

Auction-Based Multi-Robot Routing

Auction-Based Multi-Robot Routing

COLLABORATIVE EXPLORATION IN GRID DOMAINS - Constructive Conjecture of a Polynomial Time Complexity

Market-Based Multirobot Coordination Using Task Abstraction

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