Distributed Dynamic Task Allocation for Moving Target Tracking of Networked Mobile Robots Using k-WTA Network

Tasks allocation plays a pivotal role in cooperative robotics. This study proposes a novel fully distributed task allocation method for target tracking, by which mobile robots only need to share state information with communication neighbors. The proposed method adopts a distributed k winners-take-all (k-WTA) network to select the k mobile robots closest to the moving target to perform the target tracking task. In addition, an innovative robot control law is designed, incorporating speed feedback and nonlinear activation functions to achieve finite-time error convergence. Unlike previous approaches, our distributed task allocation method yields finite-time error convergence, does not rely on consensus filters, and eliminates the need for a central computing unit to get the k-WTA result during the control process. We demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed method through theoretical analysis and simulations. Compared to traditional methods, our method leads to smaller total moving distances and speed norms, which underscores the significance of our method in enhancing the efficiency and performance of mobile robots in dynamic task allocation.