MAFOSS: Multi-Agent Framework using Open-Source Software

This paper presents a new multi-agent framework using open-source software (MAFOSS). The proposed framework is a modular and cost-effective open-source hardware and software platform that is intended to help develop multiagent systems for research and education. Numerous multi-agent platforms have been developed in the literature to date that are used in various robotic applications, such as surveillance, target localization, cooperative estimation, among others. However, most of them are either tailored towards particular applications or driven by expensive software and hardware. The proposed MAFOSS system is developed for robotic applications, where a team of mobile agents (robots) is deployed to achieve a common goal. A major contribution of the MAFOSS system is the development of an open-hardware platform for differential-drive mobile robots (herein called “eduMOD” mobile robots). The software architecture of the current framework mostly relies on the robot operating system (ROS). Regardless of internal hardware and/or software architecture, appropriate actions can be applied to actuators of an individual or a team of mobile agents for controlling their motions. A few case studies have been conducted to evaluate the performance of MAFOSS.