Strategies for Selecting Communication Structures in Cooperative Search

Modeling environment is essential for agents to cooperate with each other in a distributed system. In this paper, we propose two strategies for selecting agents’ communication structures in a cooperative search using their local histories as a model of their computational environment. Under the assumption of homogeneity of agents, an agent can select a proper communication structure by using a history of local computation, and the utility of communication always matches its cost. Simulations using the traveling salesman problem show that strategies produce high performance. We also describe an extension of these strategies to other areas and the means to separate them from application programs using meta-object programming in Object-Oriented Programming Languages (OOPL).

[1]  Norman M. Sadeh,et al.  Distributed constrained heuristic search , 1991, IEEE Trans. Syst. Man Cybern..

[2]  Daniel G. Bobrow,et al.  Book review: The Art of the MetaObject Protocol By Gregor Kiczales, Jim des Rivieres, Daniel G. and Bobrow(MIT Press, 1991) , 1991, SGAR.

[3]  Les Gasser.  Boundaries, identity, and aggregation (abstract): plurality issues in multiagent systems , 1992, SIGO.

[4]  Guy L. Steele,et al.  Common Lisp the Language , 1984 .

[5]  Les Gasser,et al.  Object-based concurrent programming and distributed artificial intelligence , 1992 .

[6]  Jacques Ferber,et al.  Design of a Concurrent Language for Distributed Artificial Intelligence , 1988, Fifth Generation Computer Systems.

[7]  Edmund H. Durfee,et al.  A Distributed Problem-Solving Infrastructure for Computer Network Management , 1992, Int. J. Cooperative Inf. Syst..

[8]  Bernardo A. Huberman,et al.  The performance of cooperative processes , 1990 .

[9]  Edmund H. Durfee,et al.  Coherent Cooperation Among Communicating Problem Solvers , 1987, IEEE Transactions on Computers.

[10]  Stephanie Forrest,et al.  Analogies with immunology represent an important step toward the vision of robust, distributed protection for computers. , 1991 .

[11]  Edmund H. Durfee,et al.  Cooperation through communication in a distributed problem-solving network , 1990 .

[12]  Makoto Yokoo,et al.  Organization Self-Design of Distributed Production Systems , 1992, IEEE Trans. Knowl. Data Eng..

[13]  Victor R. Lesser,et al.  Functionally Accurate, Cooperative Distributed Systems , 1988, IEEE Transactions on Systems, Man, and Cybernetics.

[14]  Randall W. Hill,et al.  Representing and Using Organizational Knowledge in Distributed AI Systems , 1989, Distributed Artificial Intelligence.

[15]  Tad Hogg,et al.  Solving the Really Hard Problems with Cooperative Search , 1993, AAAI.

[16]  Jacques Ferber,et al.  Actors and agents as reflective concurrent objects: a MERING IV perspective , 1991, IEEE Trans. Syst. Man Cybern..