Task allocation in rescue operations using combinatorial auctions

The simulation scenario of RoboCup Rescue is a dynamic and changeable environment, where rescue agents have to mitigate a disaster. Rescue agents tend to carry out the activities nearest to them. This leads to increasing entropy in the organization of rescue activities, with various rescue agents getting involved in the same task. Such a situation is obviously undesirable. This paper provides an approach for distributing rescue agents in a more rational way, by using combinatorial auction techniques to perform task allocation. The RoboCup Rescue platform has been used as the framework for the problem.