Decentralized task allocation for heterogeneous teams with cooperation constraints Citation

This paper presents decentralized methods for allocating heterogeneous tasks to a network of agents with different capabilities, when the rules of engagement dictate various cooperation constraints. The new methods are built upon the consensus-based bundle algorithm (CBBA), and the key extensions to the baseline CBBA are: (a) task decomposition and associated scoring modification to allow for softconstrained cooperation preference, and (b) a decentralized task elimination protocol to ensure satisfaction of the hardconstrained cooperation requirements. The new extensions are shown to preserve the robust convergence property of the baseline CBBA, and numerical examples on a cooperative track & strike mission verify the performance improvement by these extended capabilities.