Task Assignment with Efficient Federated Preference Learning in Spatial Crowdsourcing

Spatial Crowdsourcing (SC) is finding widespread application in today's online world. As we have transitioned from desktop crowdsourcing applications (e.g., Wikipedia) to SC applications (e.g., Uber), there is a sense that SC systems must not only provide effective task assignment but also need to ensure privacy. To achieve these often-conflicting objectives, we propose a framework, Task Assignment with Federated Preference Learning, that performs task assignment based on worker preferences while keeping the data decentralized and private in each platform center (e.g., each delivery center of an SC company). The framework includes a federated preference learning phase and a task assignment phase. Specifically, in the first phase, we build a local preference model for each platform center based on historical data. We provide means of horizontal federated learning that makes it possible to collaboratively train these local preference models under the orchestration of a central server. Specifically, we provide a practical method that accelerates federated preference learning based on stochastic controlled averaging and achieves low communication costs while considering data heterogeneity among clients. The task assignment phase aims to achieve effective and efficient task assignment by considering workers' preferences. Extensive evaluations on real data offer insight into the effectiveness and efficiency of the paper's proposals. © 2023 IEEE. Personal use is permitted, but republication/redistribution requires IEEE permission.