Layered Distributed Constraint Optimization for Resource Allocation Problem in Distributed Sensor Network

Distributed sensor network is an important research area of multi-agent systems. We focus on a type of distributed sensor network systems that cooperatively observe multiple objects using multiple autonomous gaze control sensors. The sensor resource allocation problems of the distributed sensor network can be formalized as distributed constraint optimization problems. However, in the previous works, computation cost to solve the resource allocation problems highly increases with scale/density of the problems. In this work, we divide the problem into two layers of problems. Then two layered cooperative solvers are applied to those problems. Moreover, constraints to keep stability of the allocation in dynamic environment are introduced. The result of the experiment shows that proposed method reduces the number of message cycles. Effects of constraints for the stability of the allocation are also shown.