Market based framework for multiple AUVs cooperation

Abstract

A “Market” based framework for multiple AUVs team is introduced in this paper. It is a distributed meta-level task allocation framework. The formulation and the basic concepts of the “Market” such as “goods” and “price” are discussed first, then the basic algorithm of the “auction”. The loosely coupled v-MDTSP tasks are considered as an example of the task allocation mission. A multiple AUV team controller and a detailed algorithm are developed for such applications. The simulation results show that the controller has the advantages such as robustness and low complexity and it can achieve better optimization results than the classical central controller (such as GA) in some tasks. And the comparison of two different local solvers also implies that we should get the reasonable task allocation even not using the high quality algorithm, which can considerably decrease the cooperation computation.

Keywords

autonomous underwater vehicle (AUV) / cooperation / “Market” based framework

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