A Distributed and Concurrent Framework for Facilitating Cooperation in Dynamic Environments

This paper describes a framework that supports concurrent execution of multiple activities required for performing complex, cooperative tasks in dynamic environments. The framework is used for coordinating and managing the development and operation of a system of multi-threaded robotic agents that operate in a distributed spatial environment. Coloured Petri Nets are used to characterise task plans and interactions for the agents, which are situated in environments over which inter-agent communication has a limited range. We show that the multi-agent framework supports adaptive coordination to altered conditions in dynamic environments.

[1]  Pedro U. Lima,et al.  Coordination through institutional roles in robot collectives , 2010, AAMAS.

[2]  Kurt Jensen,et al.  A Brief Introduction to Coloured Petri Nets , 1997, TACAS.

[3]  Rachid Alami,et al.  A Plan Manager for Multi-robot Systems , 2009, Int. J. Robotics Res..

[4]  Daniel Moldt,et al.  Modelling the Structure and Behaviour of Petri Net Agents , 2001, ICATPN.

[5]  Sarit Kraus,et al.  Adaptive multi-robot coordination based on resource spending velocity , 2009, AAMAS.

[6]  H. Van Dyke Parunak,et al.  Visualizing Agent Conversations: Using Enhanced Dooley Graphs for Agent Design and Analysis , 1996 .

[7]  C. Carraro,et al.  A GAME-THEORETIC PERSPECTIVE , 1998 .

[8]  Sarit Kraus,et al.  A study of mechanisms for improving robotic group performance , 2008, Artif. Intell..

[9]  Richard S. Sutton,et al.  Reinforcement Learning: An Introduction , 1998, IEEE Trans. Neural Networks.

[10]  Fu-Shiung Hsieh,et al.  Developing cooperation mechanism for multi-agent systems with Petri nets , 2009, Eng. Appl. Artif. Intell..

[11]  Steven S. Beauchemin,et al.  Petri Net-Based Cooperation In Multi-Agent Systems , 2007, Fourth Canadian Conference on Computer and Robot Vision (CRV '07).

[12]  Victor R. Lesser,et al.  Investigating Interactions between Agent Conversations and Agent Control Components , 2000, Issues in Agent Communication.

[13]  Fernando de la Rosa,et al.  Simulation of Multi-robot Architectures in Mobile Robotics , 2009, 2009 Electronics, Robotics and Automotive Mechanics Conference (CERMA).

[14]  Alan A. Desrochers,et al.  Modeling and analysis of multi-agent systems using petri nets , 2007, 2007 IEEE International Conference on Systems, Man and Cybernetics.

[15]  Toktam Ebadi,et al.  A framework for facilitating cooperation in multi-agent systems , 2010, The Journal of Supercomputing.

[16]  Sarit Kraus,et al.  Adaptive multi-robot coordination: A game-theoretic perspective , 2010, 2010 IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation.

[17]  Daniel Moldt,et al.  Concurrent Architecture for a Multi-agent Platform , 2002, AOSE.

[18]  Martin K. Purvis,et al.  A multi-level approach and infrastructure for agent-oriented software development , 2002, AAMAS '02.