Self-organized cooperation between agents that have to solve resource collection tasks

We analyze the behavior and efficiency of a task-force of heterogeneous agents, which have different skills to solve a resource collection task. The agents can move within an arena and are able to cooperate in order to accessing the skills of other agents. Cooperation between agents is only possible, when they form a group by moving to the same location. Yet the number of agents on the same location is restricted. Thus the agents can only cooperate with a limited number of other agents at a time. Different strategies for the agents to decide whether to cooperate or not and how to detect the most favorable partner for cooperation within their surrounding are are investigated. In the studied scenarios the amounts of the different resources that are available varies between different locations. The agents are forced to decide whether to follow the drive of their own efficiency, or rather to build a cooperation with close-by agents that might be located in a different direction.