Modeling multi-robot task allocation with limited information as global game

Abstract

Continuous response threshold functions to coordinate collaborative tasks in multi-agent systems are commonly employed models in a number of fields including ethology, economics, and swarm robotics. Although empirical evidence exists for the response threshold model in predicting and matching swarm behavior for social insects, there has been no formal argument as to why natural swarms use this approach and why it should be used for engineering artificial ones. In this paper, we show, by formulating task allocation as a global game, that continuous response threshold functions used for communication-free task assignment result in system level Bayesian Nash equilibria. Building up on these results, we show that individual agents not only do not need to communicate with each other, but also do not need to model each other’s behavior, which makes this coordination mechanism accessible to very simple agents, suggesting a reason for their prevalence in nature and motivating their use in an engineering context.