Autonomous market-based multi-robot cooperation

This paper presents an approach for multi-robot cooperation based on the principles of economic market. The developed approach relies on a market-based decision making mechanism, which includes auctioning for the assignment of a task to the robots. A task may be carried out either by a single robot or cooperatively with other robots, depending on the task requirements and the available robotic resources. In the present work, the system autonomously selects the appropriate number of capable robots as required for the task, in an unknown, dynamic and unpredictable environment. The system does this in an efficient manner by choosing the candidate robot that best matches the demand of the task. The feasibility of the scheme is demonstrated by implementing the market driven approach on a team of simulated mobile robots that transport multiple objects to a goal location.