Multi-robot task allocation: analyzing the complexity and optimality of key architectures

Important theoretical aspects of multi-robot coordination mechanisms have, to date, been largely ignored. To address part of this negligence, we focus on the problem of multi-robot task allocation. We give a formal, domain-independent, statement of the problem and show it to be an instance of another, well-studied, optimization problem. In this light, we analyze several recently proposed approaches to multi-robot task allocation, describing their fundamental characteristics in such a way that they can be objectively studied, compared, and evaluated.