A real-time task-oriented scheduling algorithm for distributed multi-robot systems

Distributed multi-robot systems have attracted considerable attention over the past few decades. Multiple robots performing tasks together in a cooperative manner can have a significant advantage over a single robot, especially in parts assembly and load sharing between two or more coordinated robots. Most multi-robot systems are hard real-tune systems and require real-time scheduling. Many real-time schedulers have been discussed including round-robin, earliest-deadline-first (EDF), minimum-laxity-first (MLF), least-slack-time-first (LST), etc. Unfortunately, none of these schemes provide enough support for relative task constraints and timing constraints that are commonly used in multi-robot systems. This paper gives a task-oriented scheduling method that can help guarantee the safety, reliability and time deadline of a distributed multi-robot system. Experiments show that with the proposed algorithm, both the timing constraints and relative task interdependencies can be satisfied.