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Game theory-based negotiation for multiple robots task allocation

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  07 March 2013

Rongxin Cui ,
Ji Guo  and
Bo Gao
Rongxin Cui*
Affiliation:
College of Marine Engineering, Northwestern Polytechnical University, Xi'an 710072, P. R. China
Ji Guo
Affiliation:
College of Physics and Electrical Engineering, Anyang Normal University, Anyang 455000, P. R. China
Bo Gao
Affiliation:
College of Marine Engineering, Northwestern Polytechnical University, Xi'an 710072, P. R. China
*
*Corresponding author. E-mail: rongxin.cui@gmail.com.
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Summary

This paper investigates task allocation for multiple robots by applying the game theory-based negotiation approach. Based on the initial task allocation using a contract net-based approach, a new method to select the negotiation robots and construct the negotiation set is proposed by employing the utility functions. A negotiation mechanism suitable for the decentralized task allocation is also presented. Then, a game theory-based negotiation strategy is proposed to achieve the Pareto-optimal solution for the task reallocation. Extensive simulation results are provided to show that the task allocation solutions after the negotiation are better than the initial contract net-based allocation. In addition, experimental results are further presented to show the effectiveness of the approach presented.

Keywords

Task allocationGame theoryMultiple robotsNegotiationCooperative controlPareto-optimization
Type
Articles
Information
Robotica , Volume 31 , Issue 6 , September 2013 , pp. 923 - 934
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2013 

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