Social networks in simulated multi-robot environment

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to present a novel approach to coordination of multi‐agent teams, and in particular multi‐robot teams. The new approach is based on models of organisational sociology, namely the concept of social networks. The social relationships used in the model that is presented in this paper are trust and kinship relationships, but modified for use in heterogeneous multi‐robot teams.Design/methodology/approach – The coordination of a robot team is achieved through task allocation. The proposed task allocation mechanism was tested in the multi‐robot team task allocation simulation.Findings – The social networks‐based task allocation algorithm has performed according to expectations and the obtained results are very promising. Some intriguing similarities with higher mammalian societies were observed and they are discussed in this paper. The social networks‐based approach also exhibited the ability to learn and store information using social networks.Research limitations/implicat...

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