On-line coordination among discrete-event agents

ABSTRACT

This paper addresses a novel coordination problem for distributed agents in a discrete-event setting. We introduce and study a predicate coordination problem as the problem of distributed agents interacting and communicating between themselves to satisfy (the invariance of) a global predicate specifying an inter-agent constraint. We then develop an optimal coordination policy by which the agents can coordinate to satisfy the predicate constraint. To implement the optimal policy, we develop two on-line coordination strategies including one that can achieve significant savings in communication bandwidth.

REFERENCES

• 1: Kiam-Tian Seow , Chuan Ma , Makoto Yokoo, Multiagent Planning as Control Synthesis, Proceedings of the Third International Joint Conference on Autonomous Agents and Multiagent Systems, p.972-979, July 19-23, 2004, New York, New York [doi>10.1109/AAMAS.2004.188]
• 2: Christos G. Cassandras , Stephane Lafortune, Introduction to Discrete Event Systems, Springer-Verlag New York, Inc., Secaucus, NJ, 2006

INDEX TERMS

Primary Classification:
  I. Computing Methodologies
  I.2 ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE
        I.2.11 Distributed Artificial Intelligence

General Terms:
Algorithms, Design, Theory

Keywords:
discrete-event modeling, multiagent coordination