Learning distributed grasp in presence of redundant agents

Learning distributed object grasp by a group of robots with redundant members is the main focus of this paper. In Elahibakhsh, A. H., et al. (2004), we tackled the problem of learning form closure grasp for planar convex objects by multiple non-communicating robots without any information about the shape of objects. In this paper, the problem in presence of redundant agents is investigated. Agents´ states and actions are designed such that the group learns grasping different objects using Q-learning method. As the environment is not intelligent enough to assess each agent´s effect on the team performance, a credit assignment algorithm based on knowledge evaluation is designed. The proposed method considers the environment credit for the team, number of redundant agents, and the expertness level of each agent in its credit assignment. Applicability of the designed approach is verified through a set of simulations. It is shown that the team learns grasping different objects. Therefore, it is expected that the proposed method can be extended for distributed grasp of deformable objects