Abstract: This talk discusses methodologies to perform robust
distributed task planning for a heterogeneous team of agents performing
cooperative missions such as coordinated search, acquisition, and track
missions. We present the consensus-based bundle algorithm (CBBA), which
is a decentralized cooperative iterative auction algorithm for
assigning tasks to agents. CBBA uses two phases to achieve a
conflict-free task assignment. The first phase consists of each agent
generating a single ordered bundle of tasks by greedily selecting
tasks. The second phase then resolves inconsistent or conflicting
assignments with the objective of improving the global reward through a
bidding process. A key feature of CBBA is that its consensus protocol
aims at agreement on the winning bids and corresponding winning agents
(i.e., consensus in the spaces of decision variables and objective
function). This enables CBBA to create conflict-free solutions that are
relatively robust to inconsistencies in the current situational
awareness. Recent research has extended CBBA to handle more realistic
multi-UAV operational complications such as logical couplings in
missions, heterogeneity of teams, uncertainty in a dynamic environment,
and obstacle regions in flight space. We also present experimental
results on the RAVEN flight test facility.
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