Petri Net-Based Cooperation In Multi-Agent Systems

Abstract

We present a formal framework for robotic cooperation in which we use an extension to Petri nets, known as workflow nets, to establish a protocol among mobile agents based on the task coverage they maintain. Our choice is motivated by the fact that Petri nets handle concurrency and that goal reachability can be theoretically established. We describe the means by which cooperation is performed with Petri nets and analyze their structural and behavioral characteristics in order to show the correctness of our framework.