Multi-Robot Task Allocation

Allocation strategy

Robot speed 3.2

Live stats

Tasks done

0 / 12

Total distance

0.0 m

Makespan (slowest bot)

–

Mode

Round-robin

Round-robin vs auction

Round-robin–

Auction–

Run each mode once to compare total travel distance.

Auction log

Press Start allocation to begin.

How it works

Six robots share a warehouse floor scattered with twelve pickup tasks of varying cargo weight. Under round-robin, tasks are handed out in a fixed rotation — robot 1, robot 2, robot 3… — with no regard for who is actually closest. Under auction-based allocation, each unassigned task is "announced" to the whole fleet; every robot bids its own cost to reach it (distance from its current position or last queued stop, plus a small penalty for how many tasks it is already carrying); the lowest bidder wins, and the cycle repeats for the next task with everyone's workload updated.

bid(robot, task) = dist(robot.tail, task.pos) + 0.6·queueLength
winner = argmin(bid) over all robots
robot.queue.push(task); robot.tail = task.pos

Round-robin — simple and fair in task count, but ignores geometry: a far-away robot can get sent clear across the floor while a nearby one sits idle.
Auction-based — a real decentralized coordination technique (contract-net protocol): robots "bid" for work, so the team's total travel distance drops sharply because tasks land on whichever robot is genuinely closest.
Makespan — since robots move in parallel, total time to finish is set by whichever robot ends up with the longest route, not the sum of all routes.
Run both modes once each and compare the bars above — auction-based almost always wins on total distance.

Robot Unassigned task Completed task

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