Market-Based Multirobot Coordination For Complex Space Applications

Abstract

Multirobot coordination remains a challenging problem with potentially high impact on space applications if solved. The challenge is to enable robots to work together in an intelligent manner to execute a global task. This paper describes a market-based approach suitable for complex multirobot space applications. The market approach has had considerable success in the multirobot coordination domain. Previously published work introduced the market architecture and showed that it is inherently distributed, but can also opportunistically form centralized sub-groups to improve efficiency, and thus approach optimality. This paper focuses on the space application domain, and more specifically, presents simulation results for market-based coordination of a group of heterogeneous robots engaged in information gathering on a Martian outpost.