Time-constrained multi-agent task scheduling based on prescribed performance control

TL;DR

This paper presents a novel approach for scheduling and controlling multi-agent systems to meet time constraints and quality-of-service levels, using a distributed control law and path synthesis based on high-level plans.

Contribution

It introduces a new scheduling formulation considering reward and cost, along with a distributed hybrid control law ensuring time constraint satisfaction even with partial plan awareness.

Findings

The proposed control guarantees task deadlines under specified conditions.

Simulation verifies the effectiveness of the scheduling and control method.

The approach accommodates multiple QoS levels and partial plan knowledge.

Abstract

The problem of time-constrained multi-agent task scheduling and control synthesis is addressed. We assume the existence of a high level plan which consists of a sequence of cooperative tasks, each of which is associated with a deadline and several Quality-of-Service levels. By taking into account the reward and cost of satisfying each task, a novel scheduling problem is formulated and a path synthesis algorithm is proposed. Based on the obtained plan, a distributed hybrid control law is further designed for each agent. Under the condition that only a subset of the agents are aware of the high level plan, it is shown that the proposed controller guarantees the satisfaction of time constraints for each task. A simulation example is given to verify the theoretical results.