Robot Coalition Formation Based on Fuzzy Cooperative Games over Blockchain-Based Smart Contracts

In production cyber physical systems robots perform most operations. On the way to Industry 4.0 robots have to be automated and perform operation in coalition to reach common goals. The paper describes an approach to dynamic formation of coalitions of autonomous robots based on the integration of fuzzy cooperative games and smart contracts. Each robot is viewed as an agent, negotiating and bidding with others during the coalition forming for distribution of joint winnings. It is necessary to find combination of robots in way to maximize efficiency of joint work, while the efficiency of the entire coalition is unknown beforehand. A cooperative game with fuzzy core is used to form a coalition of robots allowing coordinating the actions of individual members to achieve a common goal, as well as to evaluate and distribute the overall benefit. To implement the negotiation process and record the composition of the coalition and the responsibilities of individual participants, it is proposed to use the smart contract technology, which now become a part of the blockchain technology. Smart contracts are proposed to be used as entity holding requirements and expected winnings of each participant in the immutable structure of a blockchain network. The final agreement can also be stored by all participants in form of smart contract that contains the distribution coefficients of the winnings given all the conditions of participation in the coalition. The availability of smart contracts to all participants in the coalition makes it possible to ensure joint control over the fulfillment of the task assigned to the coalition.