Task-Driven Co-Design of Heterogeneous Multi-Robot Systems

TL;DR

This paper introduces a formal framework for the task-driven co-design of heterogeneous multi-robot systems, enabling joint optimization of design and planning under task constraints.

Contribution

It presents a compositional, monotone co-design theory-based approach that allows efficient, scalable, and interpretable system-level optimization for multi-robot systems.

Findings

Framework supports seamless incorporation of new robot types and task profiles.

Systematic uncovering of non-obvious design alternatives with optimality guarantees.

Case studies demonstrate flexibility, scalability, and interpretability of the approach.

Abstract

Designing multi-agent robotic systems requires reasoning across tightly coupled decisions spanning heterogeneous domains, including robot design, fleet composition, and planning. Much effort has been devoted to isolated improvements in these domains, whereas system-level co-design considering trade-offs and task requirements remains underexplored. In this work, we present a formal and compositional framework for the task-driven co-design of heterogeneous multi-robot systems. Building on a monotone co-design theory, we introduce general abstractions of robots, fleets, planners, executors, and evaluators as interconnected design problems with well-defined interfaces that are agnostic to both implementations and tasks. This structure enables efficient joint optimization of robot design, fleet composition, and planning under task-specific performance constraints. A series of case studies demonstrates the capabilities of the framework. Various component models can be seamlessly incorporated, including new robot types, task profiles, and probabilistic sensing objectives, while non-obvious design alternatives are systematically uncovered with optimality guarantees. The results highlight the flexibility, scalability, and interpretability of the proposed approach, and illustrate how formal co-design enables principled reasoning about complex heterogeneous multi-robot systems.