Communication-Free Multi-Agent Coordination in an Unknown Environment⁎We gratefully acknowledge funding provided by the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC) and General Dynamics Land Systems Canada. Issue 4 (2020)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Kulchyk, Jeremy; Schonewille, Bryony; Ean, Richard; Rudie, Karen
• Is Part Of: IFAC-PapersOnLine. Volume 53:Issue 4(2020)
• Page Start: 159
• Page End: 165
• Publication Date: 2020
• Subjects: Discrete event modeling -- simulation -- Supervisory control -- automata -- Decentralized control -- Multi-agent systems -- Control under communication constraints -- Internet of things -- Autonomous Vehicles -- Map building -- Connected Vehicles -- Security; Automatic control -- Periodicals; 629.805
• DOI: 10.1016/j.ifacol.2021.04.062
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 2405-8963

Abstract

Abstract: We propose a communication-free control protocol for the coordination of multi-agent systems of autonomous vehicles. We consider a maze solving problem in which two agents must search an unknown maze as fast and as securely as possible. We formulate this problem using a discrete-event systems framework and present a coordination strategy for two agents to search a simple maze that involves no communication, thereby eliminating any cyber-security threats. Our strategy involves two agents having reverse priority decision-making policies, while searching the maze with a depth-first search control policy. Under our definition of inefficiency, which is a function of the number of dead end states that are searched by both agents, we show that our method achieves the minimum inefficiency cost, and thus performs as well as any communication-based solution.