Should We Compete or Should We Cooperate? Applying Game Theory to Task Allocation in Drone Swarms

Abstract

Let's imagine a swarm of drones that has to visit some locations and build a map in a disaster area. Let's assume the drones only can communicate to their neighbors and manage partial information of the mission. A relevant question in this scenario is “Should the robots compete or should they cooperate?”. This work analyzes the described scenario to answer this question. Two game theoretical algorithms have been developed: one competitive and another cooperative. The competitive algorithm poses games among each drone and its neighbors and searches the Nash Equilibrium. The cooperative one defines electoral systems that allow the drones to vote their preferred task allocations for their neighbors. Both algorithms are extensively tested in multiple scenarios with different features. After the experiments the question can be answered “The robots should cooperate!”.