Hierarchical Information Combination in Large-Scale Multiagent Resource Management

In this paper, we describe the Distributed Dispatcher Manager (DDM), a system for managing resource in very large-scale task and resource domains. In DDM, resources are modeled as cooperative mobile teams of agents and objects or tasks are assumed to be distributed over a virtual space. Each agent has direct access to only local and partial information about its immediate surroundings. DDM organizes teams hierarchically and addresses two important issues that are prerequisites for success in such domains: (i) how agents can extend local, partial information to arrive at a better local assessment of the situation and (ii) how the local assessments from teams of many agents can be integrated to form a global assessment of the situation. We conducted a large number of experiments in simulation and demonstrated the advantages of the DDM over other architectures in terms of accuracy and reduced inter-agent communication.