Task Search and Allocation Strategy for Heterogeneous Multiagent Systems Under Communication Constraints

In this article, a novel task search and allocation strategy is developed for heterogeneous multiagent systems with limited search range and communication constraints, which includes three processes: 1) task search; 2) task allocation; and 3) formation recovery. In order to optimize task search efficiency under communication constraints, a multigroup task search strategy is proposed by minimizing the average overlap degree between agents’ search ranges, which divides agents into multiple groups and establishes intragroup communication links. According to the communication link and group allocation results, an optimal search formation is designed for each group to maximize their individual search ranges. For transmitting information between different groups, by employing the agent with the highest communication efficiency within the discovery agent’s group as the relay agent, a communication relay strategy is proposed to transmit the task information to other groups. Then, a task allocation strategy based on communication relays is designed to achieve global task allocation by using the estimated state information of all agents. Moreover, to ensure the sustainability of task search and allocation, an intergroup scheduling strategy is proposed to recover the optimal search formation after agents complete the task-related works. Simulation results verify the effectiveness of the proposed task search and allocation strategy.