COORDINATION DIAGNOSTIC ALGORITHMS FOR TEAMS OF SITUATED AGENTS: SCALING UP

Agents in a team should be in agreement. Unfortunately, they may come to disagree due to sensor uncertainty, intermittent communication failures, etc. Once a disagreement occurs, the agents should detect and diagnose the disagreement. Current diagnostic techniques do not scale well with the number of agents, as they have high communication and computation complexity. We present novel techniques that enable scalability in three ways. First, we use communications early in the diagnostic process to stave off unneeded reasoning, which ultimately leads to unneeded communications. Second, we use light‐weight (and inaccurate) behavior recognition to focus the diagnostic reasoning on beliefs of agents that might be in conflict. Finally, we propose diagnosing only to a limited number of representative agents (instead of all the agents). We examine these techniques in large‐scale teams of situated agents in two domains and show that combining the techniques produces a diagnostic process that is highly scalable in both communication and computation.

[1]  Sarit Kraus,et al.  Reaching Agreements Through Argumentation: A Logical Model and Implementation , 1998, Artif. Intell..

[2]  M. F. Mar,et al.  ModSAF Behavior Simulation and Control , 1993 .

[3]  Milind Tambe,et al.  Toward Team-Oriented Programming , 1999, ATAL.

[4]  Meir Kalech,et al.  On the design of coordination diagnosis algorithms for teams of situated agents , 2007, Artif. Intell..

[5]  Nicholas R. Jennings,et al.  Controlling Cooperative Problem Solving in Industrial Multi-Agent Systems Using Joint Intentions , 1995, Artif. Intell..

[6]  Milind Tambe,et al.  Implementing Agent Teams in Dynamic Multiagent Environments , 1998, Appl. Artif. Intell..

[7]  Edmund H. Durfee,et al.  Scaling Up Agent Coordination Strategies , 2001, Computer.

[8]  Milind Tambe,et al.  Two Fielded Teams and Two Experts: A RoboCup Challenge Response from the Trenches , 1999, IJCAI.

[9]  Pietro Torasso,et al.  Monitoring the Execution of a Multi-Agent Plan: Dealing with Partial Observability , 2008, ECAI.

[10]  Nico Roos,et al.  Primary and secondary diagnosis of multi-agent plan execution , 2009, Autonomous Agents and Multi-Agent Systems.

[11]  Mark Klein,et al.  Exception handling in agent systems , 1999, AGENTS '99.

[12]  Sarit Kraus,et al.  Collaborative Plans for Complex Group Action , 1996, Artif. Intell..

[13]  Michael Winikoff,et al.  Debugging multi-agent systems using design artifacts: the case of interaction protocols , 2002, AAMAS '02.

[14]  Peter Fröhlich,et al.  Diagnostic Agents for Distributed Systems , 1997, ModelAge Workshop.

[15]  Gal A. Kaminka,et al.  Detecting disagreements in large-scale multi-agent teams , 2009, Autonomous Agents and Multi-Agent Systems.

[16]  Paul Scerri,et al.  Coordination of Large-Scale Multiagent Systems , 2005 .

[17]  Roberto Micalizio.  A Distributed Control Loop for Autonomous Recovery in a Multi-Agent Plan , 2009, IJCAI.

[18]  Meir Kalech,et al.  On the Design of Social Diagnosis Algorithms for Multi-Agent Teams , 2003, IJCAI.

[19]  Nico Roos,et al.  Models and methods for plan diagnosis , 2009, Autonomous Agents and Multi-Agent Systems.

[20]  Milind Tambe,et al.  What Is Wrong With Us? Improving Robustness Through Social Diagnosis , 1998, AAAI/IAAI.

[21]  Nico Roos,et al.  Reaching diagnostic agreement in multi-agent diagnosis , 2004, Proceedings of the Third International Joint Conference on Autonomous Agents and Multiagent Systems, 2004. AAMAS 2004..

[22]  Pietro Torasso,et al.  On-Line Monitoring and Diagnosis of Multi-Agent Systems: A Model Based Approach , 2004, ECAI.

[23]  Randall Davis,et al.  Model-based reasoning: troubleshooting , 1988 .

[24]  M. Matarić.  Behavior-based robotics as a tool for synthesis of artificial behavior and analysis of natural behavior , 1998, Trends in Cognitive Sciences.

[25]  Gal A. Kaminka,et al.  Towards flexible teamwork in behavior-based robots: extended abstract , 2005, AAMAS '05.

[26]  Pietro Torasso,et al.  Diagnosis of Multi-Agent Plans under Partial Observability , 2007 .

[27]  Nico Roos,et al.  Diagnosis of Plan Execution and the Executing Agent , 2005, KI.

[28]  Raymond Reiter,et al.  A Theory of Diagnosis from First Principles , 1986, Artif. Intell..

[29]  Brian C. Williams,et al.  Diagnosing Multiple Faults , 1987, Artif. Intell..

[30]  Nico Roos,et al.  A protocol for multi-agent diagnosis with spatially distributed knowledge , 2003, AAMAS '03.

[31]  Mark Klein,et al.  An experimental evaluation of domain-independent fault handling services in open multi-agent systems , 2000, Proceedings Fourth International Conference on MultiAgent Systems.

[32]  Victor R. Lesser,et al.  Designing a Family of Coordination Algorithms , 1997, ICMAS.

[33]  Randal E. Bryant,et al.  Symbolic Boolean manipulation with ordered binary-decision diagrams , 1992, CSUR.

[34]  Gal A. Kaminka,et al.  Flexible Teamwork in Behavior-Based Robots , 2005, AAAI.

[35]  Meir Kalech,et al.  Towards Model-Based Diagnosis of Coordination Failures , 2005, AAAI.

[36]  Pietro Torasso,et al.  Model-Based Diagnosis Through OBDD Compilation: A Complexity Analysis , 2006, Reasoning, Action and Interaction in AI Theories and Systems.

[37]  Paul Scerri,et al.  Coordinating very large groups of wide area search munitions , 2004 .

[38]  P. Scerri,et al.  Techniques and directions for building very large agent teams , 2005, International Conference on Integration of Knowledge Intensive Multi-Agent Systems, 2005..

[39]  Meir Kalech,et al.  Diagnosing a team of agents: scaling-up , 2004, Proceedings of the Third International Joint Conference on Autonomous Agents and Multiagent Systems, 2004. AAMAS 2004..

[40]  Milind Tambe,et al.  Robust Agent Teams via Socially-Attentive Monitoring , 2000, J. Artif. Intell. Res..

[41]  Meir Kalech,et al.  Diagnosis of Multi-Robot Coordination Failures Using Distributed CSP Algorithms , 2006, AAAI.

[42]  Victor R. Lesser,et al.  The DRESUN Testbed for Research in FA/C Distributed Situation Assessment: Extensions to the Model of External Evidence , 1995, ICMAS.

[43]  Milind Tambe,et al.  Towards Flexible Teamwork , 1997, J. Artif. Intell. Res..

[44]  Pierre Marquis,et al.  A Knowledge Compilation Map , 2002, J. Artif. Intell. Res..

[45]  R. Arkin,et al.  Behavioral diversity in learning robot teams , 1998 .

[46]  Nico Roos,et al.  Multi-Agent Diagnosis with spatially distributed knowledge , 2002 .

[47]  Victor R. Lesser,et al.  Using self-diagnosis to adapt organizational structures , 2001, AGENTS '01.

[48]  Bryan Horling,et al.  Diagnosis as an integral part of multi-agent adaptability , 2000, Proceedings DARPA Information Survivability Conference and Exposition. DISCEX'00.