Modeling Sub-Team Formations for Heterogeneous Multi-Robot Systems using Colored Petri-Net Semantics

Equipping a single robot with all the required sensing or actuating capabilities in dynamic and evolving missions may be infeasible due to energy and payload constraints. Large teams of heterogeneous robots may combine their capabilities through sub-teaming to accomplish tasks outside the capabilities of the same number of robots acting independently. This resource allocation problem requires modeling solutions capable of high levels of runtime concurrency. In this paper we propose a petri-net based semantics for prescribing these behaviors. The use of petri-nets are prevalent and well known which makes it an ideal formalism for concurrency abstractions especially for design verification and validation by formal or system simulation methods. As proof of principle we simulate the behavior revealing that successful teaming is highly dependent on energy consumption and communication latency.