Market based multi-robot coordination for a cooperative collecting and transportation problem

Abstract

This paper presents a market based multi-robot coordination approach to cooperatively collect and transport objects in an unknown environment. While this kind of coordination approach has many applications, there are three main challenges, such as the dynamic and unknown environment, the appropriate approach to coordinate robots, and resource conflict. In this project, a market-based multirobot coordination approach is proposed to help robots collect objects of interest cooperatively in a dynamic and unknown environment and transport them back to a goal location as soon as possible. In particular, the model of robots, objects and obstacles are well-defined in consideration of multiple factors which may affect the task efficiency. In addition, three cost functions are specifically designed to calculate the costs for the robots when they make bids at an auction. This approach is validated with the simulation results. It is shown that with the market based coordination approach, the robots can complete the task efficiently.