Authors:
Yuki Miyashita
1
and
Toshiharu Sugawara
2
Affiliations:
1
Shimizu Corporation, 2-16-1 Kyobashi, Chuo-ku, Tokyo, Japan
;
2
Waseda University, 3-4-1 Okubo, Shinjuku-ku, Tokyo, Japan
Keyword(s):
Multi-Agent System, Scheduling, Synchronization, Sequential Cooperative Task, Contract Net Protocol.
Abstract:
We propose a multi-agent scheduling and negotiation method for pickup and delivery tasks, each of which requires two synchronizations between heterogeneous agents. Real-world applications of multi-agent systems often require synchronous cooperation at specific times while resolving conflicts between agents. Iterative multi-agent path-finding problem has recently received much attention, which is called multi-agent pickup and delivery (MAPD) problem. In the MAPD problem, agents move to the pickup locations, load materials, and deliver them to their respective unloading locations, by repeatedly assigning new tasks to agents consecutively. Our target is a multi-agent pickup and delivery (MAPD) problem in a multi-story building/warehouse, and thus, a carrier agent requires synchronizations when loading and unloading materials in elevators. We call this problem a double synchronized MAPD (DSMAPD). To our knowledge, the current studies in MAPD have rarely considered such complicated tasks
with synchronizations. Our proposed method attempts to reduce the unnecessary free time to improve the efficiency and agents’ operating time without causing collisions and disturbing already agreed-upon synchronizations. The experiments show that our method can outperform naive methods for completing DSMAPD problem instances with reasonable planning and scheduling time.
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