Distributed policies for equitable partitioning: Theory and applications

The most widely applied resource allocation strategy is to balance, or equalize, the total workload assigned to each resource. In mobile multi-agent systems, this principle directly leads to equitable partitioning policies in which (i) the workspace is divided into subregions of equal measure, (ii) each agent is assigned to a unique subregion, and (iii) each agent is responsible for service requests originating within its own subregion. In this paper, we design distributed and adaptive policies to allow a team of agents to achieve a convex and equitable partition of a convex workspace. Our approach is related to the classic Lloyd algorithm, and exploits the unique features of Power Diagrams. We discuss possible applications to routing of vehicles in stochastic and dynamic environments, and to wireless networks. Simulation results are presented and discussed.