Social Comparison for Failure Detection and Recovery in Multi-Agent Settings

observable behavior. The modeling process uses the agent’s own reactive operators to also describe the goals of the other agents. The operators may be individual (specific to one agent) or joint (shared by a team). By contrasting its own operator hierarchy with those of the team members, the agent can identify discrepancies between the hierarchical reactive operators which it is executing and those of its team-mates. These differences raise alarm levels to indicate possible failures. These, in turn, are reasoned about explicitly to verify that indeed a failure has occurred, and then take corrective action. In the earlier example, our agent discovers it is stuck in place while the others are flying away by comparing its chosen method of flight to that of its comrades. In the