Cooperation and deadlock-handling for an object-sorting task in a multi-agent robotic system

This paper presents a deadlock-free cooperation protocol for an object-sorting task in a multi-agent system. The object-sorting task in a distributed robotic system is introduced and a cooperation protocol for the task along with the agent architecture is proposed. The agents are based on a homogeneous agent architecture that consists of search, motion, and communication modules coordinated through a global state. The deadlock problem for the object-sorting task is addressed and several deadlock-handling strategies are provided to guarantee the cooperation protocol is deadlock-free.