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On ordering multi-robot task executions within a cyber physical system
Semwal T., Jha S., Nair S. ACM Transactions on Autonomous and Adaptive Systems12 (4):1-27,2017.Type:Article
Date Reviewed: Jun 12 2018

The paper addresses the important problem of task execution by a multi-robot system. Many papers cover task allocation, but do not explicitly address task execution. The topic is important not just for robotics, but in a broader sense for cyber-physical systems.

The proposed approach does not require the use of a synchronous clock. Instead it uses a job distributor, a centralized entity that assigns tasks to robots using mobile agents, one per task. The mobile agent reaches the corresponding robot, checks its status, and starts execution when the shared resources needed are available. Upon task completion, the mobile agent returns to the job distributor. The system supports mutual exclusion of resources, access to shared resources with an asynchronous pipeline of tasks, and on-the-fly ordering of tasks. The system is shown to be deadlock free. Experimental results show improved scalability over a centralized approach for more than 30 tasks. The emulation experiments used 100 network nodes. Scalability to the number of robots is not explicitly assessed, but the paper says that search may be too slow for networks of more than 1,000 nodes. The paper includes experimental results obtained through emulation in a warehouse scenario and with some real robots.

The characterization of how the multi-robot community has addressed task allocation does not include Gerkey and Matarić’s important work [1] on the taxonomy of task allocation in multi-robot systems, and later works that extend that taxonomy. It is not correct to say that no attention has been given to robot execution. Most of the work addresses instantaneous allocation, in which robots get assigned tasks as tasks arrive and execute them immediately. In addition, there is work on time-extended allocation and task execution, work that has also been implemented on real robots. What has not been covered extensively in the multi-robot community is the execution of tasks by multi-robot systems when robots need to use shared resources.

I am surprised to see such an extensive use of mobile agents without any indication that the decreased interest in mobile agents has been caused by unresolved issues regarding security. The fact that most citations to mobile agents are more than ten years old should raise a flag. Even TARTARUS, according to its authors, has naive security [2]. Security concerns will likely reduce the proposed method’s use.

Reviewer:  M. Gini Review #: CR146077 (1808-0451)
1) Gerkey, B. P.; Matarić, M. J. A formal analysis and taxonomy of task allocation in multi-robot systems. The International Journal of Robotics Research 23, (2004), 939–954.
2) Semwal, T.; S, N.; Jha, S. S.; Nair, S. B. TARTARUS: a multi-agent platform for bridging the gap between cyber and physical systems. In Proc. of the 2016 International Conference on Autonomous Agents & Multiagent Systems IFAAMAS, 2016, 1493–1495.
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Robotics (I.2.9 )
 
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