Negotiating Monitoring Task Allocation for Orbiters

Abstract

We are interested in the problem of coordination of ground-based control stations and orbiting space probes for allocating monitoring tasks for emerging environmental situations that have the potential to become catastrophic events threatening life and property. We assume that ground based sensor networks have recognized seismic, geological, atmospheric, or some other natural phenomena that has created a rapidly evolving event which needs immediate, detailed and continuous monitoring. Control stations can calculate the resources needed to monitor such situations, but must concurrently negotiate with multiple autonomous orbiters to allocate the monitoring tasks. While control stations may prefer some orbiters over others based on their position, trajectory, equipment, etc, orbiters too have prior commitments to fulfill. We evaluate three different negotiation schemes that can be used by the control station and the orbiters to complete the monitoring task assignment. We use utilitarian and egalitarian social welfare as the metric to be maximized and discuss the relative performances of these mechanisms under different preference and resource constraints.