Robots will be used under rapidly changing and highly dangerous circumstances
such as rescue operations in a radioactive environment or a fire as well as military
operations. The robots are sent to several targets in order to carry out various
tasks.
The robots we are considering here are able to send and receive messages to
and from each other as well as solve nonlinear assignment problems. When the
robot salvo is en-route to their targets several events may happen. A number of co-
operative robots may get jammed as a consequence of disturbances. Some robots
may already have reached their targets. Some robots may not be able to reach
all targets. The system being investigated enables the surviving robots to work
together in real time and change their pre-set tasks if necessary in order to maximize
their effectiveness. In this paper we present a method which solves the reallocation
problem using a piecewise linear network algorithm. Experimental results up to 493
targets and 500 robots show that the reallocation of the robots can be done in real
time.