A game theoretic approach for antagonistic-task coordination of underwater autonomous robots in asymmetric threats scenarios

Abstract

This work proposes a game theoretic approach to tackle the problem of multi-robot coordination in critical scenarios where communication is limited and the robots must accomplish different tasks simultaneously. An important application falls in underwater robotic framework where robots are used to protect a ship against asymmetric threats guaranteeing simultaneously the coverage of the area around the ship and the tracking of a possible intruder. The problem is modelled as a potential game for which novel learning protocols are introduced. Indeed, a general extension of pay-off based algorithms is herein proposed where the main difference with state-of-the-art protocols is that the trajectory optimization is considered instead of single action optimization. Moreover, the proposed T-algorithms, steer the robots toward Nash equilibria that will be shown to correspond to the accomplishment of different, possibly antagonistic, goals. Finally, performances of the algorithms, under different scenarios, have been evaluated in simulations

Game Theory for Multi-Access Edge Computing: Survey, Use Cases, and Future Trends

“…Some examples of unmanned vehicles are aerial [159][238] [65] and maritime [239] [240]. UAVs were initially developed for military monitoring and surveillance tasks but found several interesting applications in the civilian domain.…”

“…An interesting idea for UAVs is to deploy a crowd surveillance system [238]. Another tantalizing perspective is using unmanned vehicles for maritime tasks [239][240] such as surveillance and patrolling, aquaculture inspection, or wildlife monitoring. The main goal is set up a system where a vehicle cooperatively engages with others in a way that all fulfil a specific common mission.…”

NoStop: An Open Source Framework for Design and Test of Coordination Protocol for Asymmetric Threats Protection in Marine Environment

“…All those protocols have been designed for static scenarios, where the intruder is not supposed to move, i.e., it is a fixed threat. In case of asymmetric threats the intruder moves in the environment toward its target hence, the algorithms reported in [8] (DHSL) and [9] (T-DHSL) have been extended to cope with dynamic scenarios and thus tested and evaluated with the NoStop framework. As mentioned above, for each protocol, the NoStop simulation computes a map between the minimum number of robots, the intruder velocity and the security level of the selected area.…”

“…The NoStop framework has been tested and evaluated with four different known coordination protocols based on game theoretic algorithms [5] [6] [7]. Based on the NoStop tests results of such approaches a novel distributed coordination protocol [8] [9] has been proposed. Moreover, through the NoStop framework potentiality and improvements of the proposed protocols have been validated.…”

A Game Theoretic Robotic Team Coordination Protocol For Intruder Herding

“…Given a scenario with obstacles, protected and safe areas, approaches as those proposed in [18], [19] provide Fig. 2: Protected (yellow) and Safe (green) areas are characterized by their central position and shape.…”