Homotopic Approach for Robot Allocation Optimization Coupled With Path Constraints

This letter investigates a special task allocation problem with constraints of path planning. The path planning process involved is defined as the follow-up step of task allocation. The allocation problem is coupled with path constraints, which will affect the utility of allocation solution. A homotopic approach featuring two homotopy primitives is proposed to resolve the complexity caused by the coupling between task allocation and path planning. Reference paths generated by the homotopic approach are transformed to desired task bundles for robots via transformation functions. A distributed task allocation architecture with market mechanism is employed to make consensus on task allocation solution in multi-robot. Simulation results validate the performance of the proposed methods comparing with conventional allocation methods.