Bayesian Decentralized Decision-making for Multi-Robot Systems: Sample-efficient Estimation of Event Rates

Fuente: arXiv
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Main Authors: Aguirre, Gabriel, Bingöl, Simay Atasoy, Hamann, Heiko, Kuckling, Jonas
Format: Preprint
Published: 2025
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author Aguirre, Gabriel
Bingöl, Simay Atasoy
Hamann, Heiko
Kuckling, Jonas
author_facet Aguirre, Gabriel
Bingöl, Simay Atasoy
Hamann, Heiko
Kuckling, Jonas
contents Effective collective decision-making in swarm robotics often requires balancing exploration, communication and individual uncertainty estimation, especially in hazardous environments where direct measurements are limited or costly. We propose a decentralized Bayesian framework that enables a swarm of simple robots to identify the safer of two areas, each characterized by an unknown rate of hazardous events governed by a Poisson process. Robots employ a conjugate prior to gradually predict the times between events and derive confidence estimates to adapt their behavior. Our simulation results show that the robot swarm consistently chooses the correct area while reducing exposure to hazardous events by being sample-efficient. Compared to baseline heuristics, our proposed approach shows better performance in terms of safety and speed of convergence. The proposed scenario has potential to extend the current set of benchmarks in collective decision-making and our method has applications in adaptive risk-aware sampling and exploration in hazardous, dynamic environments.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2511_22225
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Bayesian Decentralized Decision-making for Multi-Robot Systems: Sample-efficient Estimation of Event Rates
Aguirre, Gabriel
Bingöl, Simay Atasoy
Hamann, Heiko
Kuckling, Jonas
Robotics
Multiagent Systems
Effective collective decision-making in swarm robotics often requires balancing exploration, communication and individual uncertainty estimation, especially in hazardous environments where direct measurements are limited or costly. We propose a decentralized Bayesian framework that enables a swarm of simple robots to identify the safer of two areas, each characterized by an unknown rate of hazardous events governed by a Poisson process. Robots employ a conjugate prior to gradually predict the times between events and derive confidence estimates to adapt their behavior. Our simulation results show that the robot swarm consistently chooses the correct area while reducing exposure to hazardous events by being sample-efficient. Compared to baseline heuristics, our proposed approach shows better performance in terms of safety and speed of convergence. The proposed scenario has potential to extend the current set of benchmarks in collective decision-making and our method has applications in adaptive risk-aware sampling and exploration in hazardous, dynamic environments.
title Bayesian Decentralized Decision-making for Multi-Robot Systems: Sample-efficient Estimation of Event Rates
topic Robotics
Multiagent Systems
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2511.22225