Review on state-of-the-art dynamic task allocation strategies for multiple-robot systems

Purpose - This paper aims to present a concise review on the variant state-of-the-art dynamic task allocation strategies. It presents a thorough discussion about the existing dynamic task allocation strategies mainly with respect to the problem application, constraints, objective functions and uncertainty handling methods. Design/methodology/approach - This paper briefs the introduction of multi-robot dynamic task allocation problem and discloses the challenges that exist in real-world dynamic task allocation problems. Numerous task allocation strategies are discussed in this paper, and it establishes the characteristics features between them in a qualitative manner. This paper also exhibits the existing research gaps and conducive future research directions in dynamic task allocation for multiple mobile robot systems. Findings - This paper concerns the objective functions, robustness, task allocation time, completion time, and task reallocation feature for performance analysis of different task allocation strategies. It prescribes suitable real-world applications for variant task allocation strategies and identifies the challenges to be resolved in multi-robot task allocation strategies. Originality/value - This paper provides a comprehensive review of dynamic task allocation strategies and incites the salient research directions to the researchers in multi-robot dynamic task allocation problems. This paper aims to summarize the latest approaches in the application of exploration problems.