Multi-Agent Continuous Transportation with Online Balanced Partitioning
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by
Chao Wang, Somchaya Liemhetcharat, Kian Hsiang Low
2015
Abstract
We introduce the concept of continuous transportation task to the context of
multi-agent systems. A continuous transportation task is one in which a
multi-agent team visits a number of fixed locations, picks up objects, and
delivers them to a final destination. The goal is to maximize the rate of
transportation while the objects are replenished over time. Examples of
problems that need continuous transportation are foraging, area sweeping, and
first/last mile problem. Previous approaches typically neglect the interference
and are highly dependent on communications among agents. Some also incorporate
an additional reconnaissance agent to gather information. In this paper, we
present a hybrid of centralized and distributed approaches that minimize the
interference and communications in the multi-agent team without the need for a
reconnaissance agent. We contribute two partitioning-transportation algorithms
inspired by existing algorithms, and contribute one novel online
partitioning-transportation algorithm with information gathering in the
multi-agent team. Our algorithms have been implemented and tested extensively
in the simulation. The results presented in this paper demonstrate the
effectiveness of our algorithms that outperform the existing algorithms, even
without any communications between the agents and without the presence of a
reconnaissance agent.
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