A dynamic-programming-styled algorithm for time-optimal multi-agent task assignment

Cooperative control of multiple agents is an area of intense current research activity. Many practical applications of multi-agent control frequently necessitate assignment of tasks among agents such that the overall mission goals are accomplished in a minimal amount of time. We use a dynamic programming formulation to address a class of time-optimal multi-agent task assignment problems. Based on the recurrence relation obtained from the principle of optimality, we develop an algorithm with a distributed computational architecture for the global time-optimal task assignment. In addition, we propose a communication protocol to facilitate distributed decision making among agents. Illustrative studies are included to demonstrate the efficacy of the proposed time-optimal multi-agent task assignment algorithm