On-line coordination: Event interaction and state communication between cooperative agents

Article type: Research Article

Authors: Pham, Manh Tung | Seow, Kiam Tian

Affiliations: Division of Computing Systems, School of Computer Engineering, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore 639798, Republic of Singapore. E-mail: {phammt,asktseow}@ntu.edu.sg

Note: [] Corresponding author.

Abstract: This paper addresses a novel coordination problem for distributed agents in a discrete-event setting. We first introduce and study a predicate coordination problem as the problem of two 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, as demonstrated by simulations. An extension to on-line coordination among multiple agents satisfying multiple constraints is then developed and discussed.

Keywords: Multiagent coordination, multiagent communication, discrete-event modeling, discrete-event systems

DOI: 10.3233/WIA-2012-0240

Journal: Web Intelligence and Agent Systems: An International Journal, vol. 10, no. 2, pp. 179-192, 2012