Simultaneous task subdivision and allocation using negotiations in multi-robot systems

Abstract

© 2015 The Author(s). Licensee InTech. This paper presents a negotiations based approach for simultaneous task subdivision and assignment in heterogeneous multi robot systems. We first propose an abstraction of the concept of a task that allows for the generalizing of a variety of different problems. Based on such an abstraction, we have developed a negotiation protocol based on Rubinstein's alternate offers protocol. This is extended to the multi dimensional space and employs a heuristic search step for evaluating and generating offers. Furthermore, the issue of how to extend a bilateral negotiations protocol to more than two parties is taken into consideration. The protocol was first tested in numerical simulations with different scenarios and then applied to three real world missions.