Multi-Robot Task Allocation Method for Heterogeneous Tasks with Priorities

Task allocation is a complex and open problem for multi-robot systems and very especially if a priority is associated to each task. In this paper, we present a method to allocate tasks with priorities in a team of heterogeneous robots. The system is partially inspired on auction and thresholds-based methods and tries to determine the optimum number of robots that are needed to solve specific tasks taking into account their priorities and characteristics. Thus, we can minimize the interference effect between robots and increase the system performance. The method has been extensively tested for a modification of the well-known foraging task, using different kinds of robots. Experimental results are presented to show the benefits of the proposed method.