Journal
IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON ROBOTICS AND AUTOMATION
Volume 18, Issue 5, Pages 758-768Publisher
IEEE-INST ELECTRICAL ELECTRONICS ENGINEERS INC
DOI: 10.1109/TRA.2002.803462
Keywords
auctions; contract nets; coordination; multirobot systems; task allocation
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The key to utilizing the potential of multirobot systems is cooperation. How can we achieve cooperation in systems composed of failure-prone autonomous robots operating in noisy, dynamic environments? In this paper, we present a novel method of dynamic task allocation for groups of such robots. We implemented and tested an auction-based task allocation system which we call MURDOCH, built upon a principled, resource centric, publish/subscribe communication model. A variant of the Contract Net Protocol, MURDOCH produces a distributed approximation to a global optimum of resource usage. We validated MURDOCH in two very different domains: a tightly coupled multirobot physical manipulation task and a loosely coupled multirobot experiment in long-term autonomy. The primary contribution of this paper is to show empirically that distributed negotiation mechanisms such as MURDOCH are viable and effective for coordinating physical multirobot systems.
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