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arXiv · 1805.08712

A Distributed Version of the Hungarian Method for Multi-Robot Assignment

Smriti Chopra·Giuseppe Notarstefano·Matthew Rice·Magnus Egerstedt
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Abstract

In this paper, we propose a distributed version of the Hungarian Method to solve the well known assignment problem. In the context of multi-robot applications, all robots cooperatively compute a common assignment that optimizes a given global criterion (e.g. the total distance traveled) within a finite set of local computations and communications over a peer-to-peer network. As a motivating application, we consider a class of multi-robot routing problems with "spatio-temporal" constraints, i.e. spatial targets that require servicing at particular time instants. As a means of demonstrating the theory developed in this paper, the robots cooperatively find online, suboptimal routes by applying an iterative version of the proposed algorithm, in a distributed and dynamic setting. As a concrete experimental test-bed, we provide an interactive "multi-robot orchestral" framework in which a team of robots cooperatively plays a piece of music on a so-called orchestral floor.

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Smriti Chopra, Giuseppe Notarstefano, Matthew Rice, Magnus Egerstedt. 2018-05-22. A Distributed Version of the Hungarian Method for Multi-Robot Assignment. https://arxiv.org/abs/1805.08712

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