Self-adaptive mechanism for coalitions formation in a robot network

Abstract

We study a situation where a swarm of robots is deployed to handle multiple different targets in a confined unknown area. The targets are found in real time and each target requires a certain amount of resources. An individual robot may not have sufficient capabilities for its execution, therefore an announcement process can start. We address the issue of how each robot responds itself to one of the discovered targets in an efficient way, considering a dynamic scenario where failure of the robots and unreliable communications unpredictably can occur. We propose a network architecture that incorporates a self-regulating mechanism allowing the distribution among the targets, with the minimal exchange of information. We have conducted experiments for evaluating our proposed approach in a simulated environment, considering different network parameters and studying the scalability and the robustness of the proposed model.