A Decentralised Approach to Task Allocation Using Blockchain

Abstract

One of the challenges in developing multi-robot systems is the design of appropriate coordination strategies in such a way that robots perform their operations efficiently. In particular, efficient coordination requires judicious task allocation. Without appropriate task allocation, the use of multi-robot systems in complex scenarios becomes limited or even unfeasible. Real-world scenarios usually require the use of heterogeneous robots and task fulfillment with different structures, constraints, and degrees of complexity. In such scenarios, decentralised solutions seem to be appropriate for task allocation, since centralised solutions represent a single point of failure for the system. During the allocation process, in decentralised approaches, there are often communication requirements, as participants need to share information. Maintaining data integrity, resilience, and security in data access are some of the important features for this type of solution. In that direction, we propose an architecture for dynamic and decentralised allocation of tasks built on the idea of having communication and coordination in a multi-agent system through a private blockchain.

Towards Blockchain-based Multi-Agent Robotic Systems: Analysis, Classification and Applications

“…The basic message of this paper is to bring together and provide, as a guide, ideas on how frameworks, architectures and structures supported by blockchain solutions can be used to solve practical problems that face by multi-agent robotic systems and cyber-physical systems. Relevant studies show that the blockchain begins to play a large role in the development of systems and applications with many agents (robots), in which the development of strategies for their coordination is conducted in such a way that agents can effectively perform their operations and intelligently coordinate task allocation [10]. The analysis of the recent publications allowed to identify and classify groups of tasks for multi-agent robotic systems based on blockchain technology.…”

“…The successes demonstrated in recent years in the integration of robotic systems, wireless sensor networks (WSN), cloud computing, distributed planning and management, and distributed ledgers provides and optimistic outlook towards increasingly popular technological solutions such as the Internet of Robotic Things (IoRT) [1], [2], [3], [4], [5] and the Blockchain-based Multi-Agent Robotic Systems (MARS) [6], [7], [8], [9]. It is known that one of the important problems in developing multi-robot systems is the design of strategies for their coordination in such a way that the robots could effectively perform their operations and reasonably coordinate the task allocation among themselves [10]. Real-world scenarios usually require the use of heterogeneous robots and the performance of tasks with various structures, constraints and complexity.…”

Applications of Distributed Ledger Technologies in Robotics

“…Basegio et al, [41] proposed an communication architecture to enable a dynamic and decentralised task allocation system. They argue that the use of a centralised planning system has a single point of failure that real world multi complex task systems cannot tolerate.…”

A Survey on Blockchain in Robotics: Issues, Opportunities, Challenges and Future Directions

“…Table 6 highlights the information like blockchain platform, type of blockchain and consensus algorithm used for the considered related works. Basegio et al (2017) proposed an architecture using blockchain technology which enables dynamic and decentralized task allocation and a communication medium among the robots, and between robots and organization. The task allocation is done on the basis of available roles for the task and the capabilities needed to perform that task.…”