Representations of task assignments in distributed systems using Young tableaux and symmetric groups

This article presents a novel approach to representing task assignments for partitioned agents (respectively, tasks) in distributed systems. A partition of agents (respectively, tasks) is represented by a Young tableau, which is one of the main tools in studying symmetric groups and combinatorics. In this article, we propose a task, agent and assignment tableau in order to represent a task assignment for partitioned agents (respectively, tasks) in a distributed system. This article is concerned with representations of task assignments rather than finding approximate or near optimal solutions for task assignments. A Young tableau approach allows us to raise the expressiveness of partitioned agents (respectively, tasks) and their task assignments.     

Efficient task assignment for spatial crowdsourcing: A combinatorial fractional optimization approach with semi-bandit learning

Spatial crowdsourcing has emerged as a new paradigm for solving problems in the physical world with the help of human workers. A major challenge in spatial crowdsourcing is to assign reliable workers to nearby tasks. The goal of such task assignment process is to maximize the task completion in the face of uncertainty. This process is further complicated when tasks arrivals are dynamic and worker reliability is unknown. Recent research proposals have tried to address the challenge of dynamic task assignment. Yet the majority of the proposals do not consider the dynamism of tasks and workers. They also make the unrealistic assumptions of known deterministic or probabilistic workers’ reliabilities. In this paper, we propose a novel approach for dynamic task assignment in spatial crowdsourcing. The proposed approach combines bi-objective optimization with combinatorial multi-armed bandits. We formulate an online optimization problem to maximize task reliability and minimize travel costs in spatial crowdsourcing. We propose the distance-reliability ratio (DRR) algorithm based on a combinatorial fractional programming approach. The DRR algorithm reduces travel costs by 80% while maximizing reliability when compared to existing algorithms. We extend the DRR algorithm for the scenario when worker reliabilities are unknown. We propose a novel algorithm (DRR-UCB) that uses an interval estimation heuristic to approximate worker reliabilities. Experimental results demonstrate that the DRR-UCB achieves high reliability in the face of uncertainty. The proposed approach is particularly suited for real-life dynamic spatial crowdsourcing scenarios. This approach is generalizable to the similar problems in other areas in expert systems. First, it encompasses online assignment problems when the objective function is a ratio of two linear functions. Second, it considers situations when intelligent and repeated assignment decisions are needed under uncertainty.     

Adaptive Task Pools: Efficiently Balancing Large Number of Tasks on Shared-address Spaces

Task based approaches with dynamic load balancing are well suited to exploit parallelism in irregular applications. For such applications, the execution time of tasks can often not be predicted due to input dependencies. Therefore, a static task assignment to execution resources usually does not lead to the best performance. Moreover, a dynamic load balancing is also beneficial for heterogeneous execution environments. In this article a new adaptive data structure is proposed for storing and balancing a large number of tasks, allowing an efficient and flexible task management. Dynamically adjusted blocks of tasks can be moved between execution resources, enabling an efficient load balancing with low overhead, which is independent of the actual number of tasks stored. We have integrated the new approach into a runtime system for the execution of task-based applications for shared address spaces. Runtime experiments with several irregular applications with different execution schemes show that the new adaptive runtime system leads to good performance also in such situations where other approaches fail to achieve comparable results.     

考虑时序约束的多智能体协同任务分配

研究多智能体系统的多目标多任务分配问题, 考虑任务之间的时序关系, 建立分布式任务分配模型. 扩展了一致性包算法(CBBA), 按优先级将目标任务归入不同层级, 各智能体在构建任务包和任务路径时, 只将分配过高阶段任务的目标添加至相应的任务包和任务路径中, 从而保证目标任务时序约束的同时, 保持了CBBA算法的特性. 与多任务分配问题经典算法的比对实验表明, 所提出的改进算法求解结果稳定可靠, 运行时间优于经典算法.

     

An incremental ant colony optimization based approach to task assignment to processors for multiprocessor scheduling

Optimized task scheduling is one of the most important challenges to achieve high performance in multiprocessor environments such as parallel and distributed systems. Most introduced task-scheduling algorithms are based on the so-called list scheduling technique. The basic idea behind list scheduling is to prepare a sequence of nodes in the form of a list for scheduling by assigning them some priority measurements, and then repeatedly removing the node with the highest priority from the list and allocating it to the processor providing the earliest start time (EST). Therefore, it can be inferred that the makespans obtained are dominated by two major factors: (1) which order of tasks should be selected (sequence subproblem); (2) how the selected order should be assigned to the processors (assignment subproblem). A number of good approaches for overcoming the task sequence dilemma have been proposed in the literature, while the task assignment problem has not been studied much. The results of this study prove that assigning tasks to the processors using the traditional EST method is not optimum; in addition, a novel approach based on the ant colony optimization algorithm is introduced, which can find far better solutions.     

模糊环境中工作流任务分配的多级模型

对工作流实例中各用户型任务进行自动优化分配是提高工作流管理系统运行效率的关键技术之一 .在详细分析了影响用户型任务分配的多种因素及其语意模糊性后,提出了一个可组合的任务分配多级模型以及相应的任务分配方法,详细讨论了具有自适应能力的影响因素权重设计方法 .最后,通过与其他任务分配方法对比,分析了该任务分配方法的性能 .     

空间众包环境下的3类对象在线任务分配

随着移动互联网技术与O2O（offline-to-online）商业模式的发展,各类空间众包平台变得日益流行,如滴滴出行、百度外卖等空间众包平台更与人们日常生活密不可分.在空间众包研究中,任务分配问题更是其核心问题之一,该问题旨在研究如何将实时出现的空间众包任务分配给适宜的众包工人.但大部分现有研究所基于的假设过强,存在两类不足:（1）现有工作通常假设基于静态场景,即全部众包任务和众包工人的时空信息在任务分配前已完整获知.但众包任务与众包工人在实际应用中动态出现,且需实时地对其进行任务分配,因此现存研究结果在实际应用中缺乏可行性;（2）现有研究均假设仅有两类众包参与对象,即众包任务与众包工人,而忽略了第三方众包工作地点对任务分配的影响.综上所述,为弥补上述不足,本文提出了一类新型动态任务分配问题,即空间众包环境下的三类对象在线任务分配.该问题不但囊括了任务分配中的三类研究对象,即众包任务、众包工人和众包工作地点,而且关注动态环境.本文进而设计了随机阈值算法,并给出了该算法在最差情况下的竞争比分析.特别的是,本文还采用在线学习方法进一步优化了随机阈值算法,提出自适应随机阈值算法,并证明该优化策略可逼近随机阈值算法使用不同阈值所能达到的最佳效果.最终,本文通过在真实数据集和具有不同分布人造数据集上进行的大量实验验证了算法的效果与性能.     

Locality-sensitive task allocation and load balancing in networked multiagent systems: Talent versus centrality

With the development of large scale multiagent systems, agents are always organized in network structures where each agent interacts only with its immediate neighbors in the network. Coordination among networked agents is a critical issue which mainly includes two aspects: task allocation and load balancing; in traditional approach, the resources of agents are crucial to their abilities to get tasks, which is called talent-based allocation. However, in networked multiagent systems, the tasks may spend so much communication costs among agents that are sensitive to the agent localities; thus this paper presents a novel idea for task allocation and load balancing in networked multiagent systems, which takes into account both the talents and centralities of agents. This paper first investigates the comparison between talent-based task allocation and centrality-based one; then, it explores the load balancing of such two approaches in task allocation. The experiment results show that the centrality-based method can reduce the communication costs for single task more effectively than the talent-based one, but the talent-based method can generally obtain better load balancing performance for parallel tasks than the centrality-based one.     

一种静态最少优先级分配算法

随着实时系统越来越多地应用于各种快速更新系统,尤其是各种片上系统,如PDA(personal digital assistant),PSP(play station portable)等,性价比已成为系统设计者的主要关注点.实际应用中,实时系统通常仅支持较少的优先级,常出现系统优先级数小于任务数的情况(称为有限优先级),此时,需将多个任务分配到同一系统优先级,RM(rate monotonic),DM(deadline monotonic)等静态优先级分配算法不再适用.为此,静态有限优先级分配是研究在任务集合静态优先级可调度的情况下,可否以及如何用较少或最少的系统优先级保持任务集合可调度.已有静态有限优先级分配可分为两类:固定数目优先级分配和最少优先级分配.给出了任意截止期模型下任务静态有限优先级可调度的充要条件以及不同静态有限优先级分配间转换时的几个重要性质,指出了系统优先级从低到高分配策略的优越性,定义了饱和任务组与饱和分配的概念,证明了在任务集合静态优先级可调度的情况下,最少优先级分配比固定数目优先级分配更具一般性.最后提出一种最少优先级分配算法LNPA(least-number priority assignment).与现有算法相比,LNPA适用范围更广,且复杂度较低.     

Complex Task Allocation in Mobile Surveillance Systems

In mobile surveillance systems, complex task allocation addresses how to optimally assign a set of surveillance tasks to a set of mobile sensing agents to maximize overall expected performance, taking into account the priorities of the tasks and the skill ratings of the mobile sensors. This paper presents a market-based approach to complex task allocation. Complex tasks are the tasks that can be decomposed into subtasks. Both centralized and hierarchical allocations are investigated as winner determination strategies for different levels of allocation and for static and dynamic search tree structures. The objective comparison results show that hierarchical dynamic tree task allocation outperforms all the other techniques especially in complex surveillance operations where large number of robots is used to scan large number of areas.     

Solving efficiently Decentralized MDPs with temporal and resource constraints

Optimizing the operation of cooperative multi-agent systems that can deal with large and realistic problems has become an important focal area of research in the multi-agent community. In this paper, we first present a new model, the OC-DEC-MDP (Opportunity Cost Decentralized Markov Decision Process), that allows us to represent large multi-agent decision problems with temporal and precedence constraints. Then, we propose polynomial algorithms to efficiently solve problems formalized by OC-DEC-MDPs. The problems we deal with consist of a set of agents that have to execute a set of tasks in a cooperative way. The agents cannot communicate during task execution and they must respect resource and temporal constraints. Our approach is based on Decentralized Markov Decision Processes (DEC-MDPs) and uses the concept of opportunity cost borrowed from economics to obtain approximate control policies. Experimental results show that our approach produces good quality solutions for complex problems which are out of reach of existing approaches.     

Robust Adaptive Metrics for Deadline Assignment in Distributed Hard Real-Time Systems

Distributed real-time applications usually consist of several component tasks and must be completed by its end-to-end (E-T-E) deadline. As long as the E-T-E deadline of an application is met, the strategy used for dividing it up for component tasks does not affect the application itself. One would therefore like to slice each application E-T-E deadline and assign the slices to component tasks so as to maximize the schedulability of the component tasks, and hence the application. Distribution of the E-T-E deadline over component tasks is a difficult and important problem since there exists a circular dependency between deadline distribution and task assignment. We propose a new deadline-distribution scheme which has two major improvements over the best scheme known to date. It can distribute task deadlines prior to task assignment and relies on new adaptive metrics that yield significantly better performance in the presence of high resource contention. The deadline-distribution problem is formulated for distributed hard real-time systems with relaxed locality constraints, where schedulability analysis must be performed at pre-run-time, and only a subset of the tasks are constrained by pre-assignment to specific processors. Although it is applicable to any scheduling policy, the proposed deadline-distribution scheme is evaluated for a non-preemptive, time-driven scheduling policy. Using extensive simulations, we show that the proposed adaptive metrics deliver much better performance (in terms of success ratio and maximum task lateness) than their non-adaptive counterparts. In particular, the simulation results indicate that, for small systems, the adaptive metrics can improve the success ratio by as much as an order of magnitude. Moreover, the new adaptive metrics are found to exhibit very robust performance over a large variety of application and architecture scenarios.     

复杂约束条件下异构多智能体联盟任务分配

分布式任务决策是提高多智能体系统自主性的关键. 以异构多智能体协同执行复杂任务为背景, 首先建立 了一种考虑任务载荷资源约束、任务耦合关系约束及执行窗口约束等条件的异构多智能体分布式联盟任务分配模 型; 其次, 对一致性包算法(CBBA)进行了扩展, 提出了基于改进冲突消解原则的一致性联盟算法(CBCA), 以实现异 构多智能体协同无冲突任务分配, 并进一步证明了在一定条件下CBCA算法收敛于改进顺序贪婪算法(ISGA). 最后 通过数值仿真, 验证了CBCA算法求解复杂约束条件下异构多智能体联盟任务分配问题的可行性和快速性.     

Software agents and agency: A personal information management perspective

This paper considers the concept of agency and the applications of software agents within the field of Personal Information Management (PIM). PIM addresses the complex activities undertaken by individuals when organising their personal information. In the context of Personal Information Management, effective software agents may allow users to obtain information relevant to their tasks, and present it in a form that is directly targeted to the needs of the user.This paper concentrates on the notion of agency and its direct application to PIM tasks. A user-driven approach to the design of agent-based systems is presented. We argue that agent systems will only be successful if both usersand their tasks act as the bases for the design of such systems. An example task domain (searching the World-Wide Web) is introduced and a taxonomy of Web agents for the domain is discussed. Technical issues raised during the preliminary implementation of Web agents are also introduced.     

Contextual Resource Negotiation-Based Task Allocation and Load Balancing in Complex Software Systems

In the complex software systems, software agents always need to negotiate with other agents within their physical and social contexts when they execute tasks. Obviously, the capacity of a software agent to execute tasks is determined by not only itself but also its contextual agents; thus, the number of tasks allocated on an agent should be directly proportional to its self-owned resources as well as its contextual agents' resources. This paper presents a novel task allocation model based on the contextual resource negotiation. In the presented task allocation model, while a task comes to the software system, it is first assigned to a principal agent that has high contextual enrichment factor for the required resources; then, the principal agent will negotiate with its contextual agents to execute the assigned task. However, while multiple tasks come to the software system, it is necessary to make load balancing to avoid overconvergence of tasks at certain agents that are rich of contextual resources. Thus, this paper also presents a novel load balancing method: if there are overlarge number of tasks queued for a certain agent, the capacities of both the agent itself and its contextual agents to accept new tasks will be reduced. Therefore, in this paper, the task allocation and load balancing are implemented according to the contextual resource distribution of agents, which can be well suited for the characteristics of complex software systems; and the presented model can reduce more communication costs between allocated agents than the previous methods based on self-owned resource distribution of agents.     

Joint task assignment and cache partitioning with cache locking for WCET minimization on MPSoC

Cache locking technique is often utilized to guarantee a tighter prediction of Worst-Case Execution Time (WCET) which is one of the most important performance metrics for embedded systems. However, in Multi-Processor Systems-on-Chip (MPSoC) systems with multi-tasks, Level 2 (L2) cache is often shared among different tasks and cores, which leads to extended unpredictability of cache. Task assignment has inherent relevancy for cache behavior, while cache behavior also affects the efficiency of task assignment. Task assignment and cache behavior have dramatic influences on the overall WCET of MPSoC. This paper proposes joint task assignment and cache partitioning techniques to minimize the overall WCET for MPSoC systems. Cache locking is applied to each task to guarantee a precise WCET. We prove that the joint problem is NP-hard and propose several efficient algorithms. Experimental results show that the proposed algorithms can consistently reduce the overall WCET compared to previous techniques.     

A Constraint-Based Approach to Assigning System Components to Tasks

In multi-component systems, individual components must be assigned to the tasks that they are to perform. In many applications, there are several possible task decompositions that could be used to achieve the task, and there are limited resources available throughout the system. We present a technique for making task assignments under these conditions. Constraint satisfaction is used to assign components to particular tasks. Heuristics suggest a task decomposition for which an assignment can be found efficiently. We have applied our technique to the problem of task assignment in systems of underwater robots and instrument platforms working together to collect data in the ocean.     

Task assignment in multiple server farms using preemptive migration and flow control

Existing task assignment policies proposed for assigning tasks in stand-alone server farms are not efficient in multiple server farm environments because they have not been designed to exploit the properties of such environments. With the emergence of high speed networks and operating systems that have features such as preemptive migration, the importance of designing task assignment policies for assigning tasks in multiple server farms has increased. Such policies can result in better overall performance compared to those that optimise performance in stand-alone server farms.This paper proposes a task assignment policy suitable for assigning tasks in multiple server farms. The proposed policy, called Multi-Cluster Task Assignment based on Preemptive Migration (MCTPM) is based on a multi-tier host architecture that reduces the variance of task sizes in host queues by processing tasks with similar sizes using a set of hosts that have a distinct task size range. MCTPM controls the traffic flow into server farms via a global dispatching device so as to optimise the performance. MCTPM supports preemptive task migration between servers in the same farm and between servers in different farms.Performance analysis of the proposed policy indicates that significant performance improvements are possible under a wide range of workload scenarios. For example, MCTPM outperforms existing policies such as MC-Random, MC-TAGSPM and MC-MTTPM by factors of 190, 5 and 10.5 respectively under certain scenarios.     

Genetic Team Composition and Level of Selection in the Evolution of Cooperation

In cooperative multiagent systems, agents interact to solve tasks. Global dynamics of multiagent teams result from local agent interactions, and are complex and difficult to predict. Evolutionary computation has proven a promising approach to the design of such teams. The majority of current studies use teams composed of agents with identical control rules (“genetically homogeneous teams”) and select behavior at the team level (“team-level selection”). Here we extend current approaches to include four combinations of genetic team composition and level of selection. We compare the performance of genetically homogeneous teams evolved with individual-level selection, genetically homogeneous teams evolved with team-level selection, genetically heterogeneous teams evolved with individual-level selection, and genetically heterogeneous teams evolved with team-level selection. We use a simulated foraging task to show that the optimal combination depends on the amount of cooperation required by the task. Accordingly, we distinguish between three types of cooperative tasks and suggest guidelines for the optimal choice of genetic team composition and level of selection.      

静态实时中间件的优先级映射问题

使用截止期单调(DM)调度算法和分布式优先级冲顶资源访问控制协议(DPCP)的实时CORBA系统中,当节点的本地优先级个数不足时,必须将多个全局优先级映射成一个本地优先级.这需要:①判定映射后任务可调度性的充分必要条件;②减少时间复杂度的映射算法.为此,推导出判定条件,确定了DGPM映射算法.该算法在保证系统可调度的前提下分配任务,或者证明映射后系统不可调度.证明了DGPM算法能调度其他直序列优先级映射算法可调度的任务和GCS集合.判定条件和算法在实际项目中得到了应用.