Negotiation of target points for teams of heterogeneous robots: an application to exploration

In this paper, we present an application to Search and Rescue of a task negotiation protocol for teams of heterogeneous robots. Self-organization through autonomous negotiations allow the robots to assign themselves a number of target observation points decided by the operator, who is relieved from deciding the optimal assignment. The operator can then focus on monitoring the mission and deciding next actions. The protocol has been tested on both computer simulations and real robots.