AUCTION-BASED FAULT-TOLERANT MULTI-ROBOT COOPERATION

This paper presents a market driven approach for robust multi-robot cooperation. The example task that is considered is object transportation from an original location to a goal location. The developed methodology relies on market-based decision making, which uses auction as a process of assigning a task to a robot by offering it up for a bid. In the event of robot failure during the execution of a task, the task is re-allocated to another suitable robot using the same auctioning process. This paper addresses two possible robot malfunctions—partial and full failures, which can happen any time during the execution of a task. The practicability of the developed methodology is demonstrated by implementing an auction-based approach on a team of simulated robots that cooperatively execute a task.