Abstract
A process of team formation by autonomous agents in a distributed environment is presented. Since the environment is distributed, there are serious problems with communication and consistent decision making inside a team. To deal with these problems, the standard technique of token passing in a computer network is applied. The passing cycle of the token serves as the communication route. It assures consistent decision making inside the team maintaining its organizational integrity. On the other hand it constitutes a component of the plan of the cooperative work performed by a complete team. Two algorithms for team formation are given. The first one is based on simple self-interested agents that still can be viewed as reactive agents (see [14]) although augmented with knowledge, goal, and cooperation mechanisms. The second one is based on sophisticated self-interested agents. Moreover, the algorithm based on fully cooperative agents, which is an adaptation of the static routing algorithm in computer networks, is constructed in order to compare its performance with performances of the team formation algorithms.
Partially supported by the State Committee for Scientific Research under the grant No. 8T11C 031 10 and ESPRIT project 20288 CRIT-2
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Preview
Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.
References
Bratman, M.E.: Intentions, Plans, and Practical Reason. Harvard University Press, Cambridge (1987)
Cohen, P.R., Levesque, H.J.: Teamwork. Nous, 35
Cohen, P.R., Levesque, H.J., Smith, I.: On Team Formation. In: Hintikka, G.H., Tuomela, R. (eds.) Contemporary Action Theory. Social Action, Synthese Library, vol. 2, pp. 87–114. Kluwer Academic Publishers, Dordrecht (1997)
Doran, J.E., Franklin, S., Jennings, N.R., Norman, T.J.: On cooperation in Multi-Agent-Systems. The Knowledge Engineering Review 12(3) (1997)
Grosz, B., Kraus, S.: Collaborative plans for complex group actions. Artificial Intelligence 86, 269–358 (1996)
d’Inverno, M., Luck, M., Wooldridge, M.: Cooperation Structures. In: Proc. IJCAI 1997, Nagoya, Japan (August 1997)
Jennings, N.R.: Commitments and Conventions: The Foundations of Coordination in Multi-Agent Systems. Knowledge Engineering Review 8(3), 223–250 (1993)
Jennings, N.R.: Controlling cooperative problem solving in industrial multi-agent systems using joint intentions. Artificial Intelligence 75 (1995)
Ketchpel, S.: Coalitions formation among rational agents. In: Proc. MAAMAW 1993 (1993)
Kinny, D., Ljungberg, M., Rao, A., Sonenberg, E., Tidhar, G., Werner, E.: Planned team activity. In: Castelfranchi, C., Werner, E. (eds.) Artificial Social Systems. LNCS (LNAI), vol. 830 (1992)
Kitano, H., Tambe, M., Asada, M., Kuniyoshi, Y., Noda, I., Osawa, E.: The robocup synthetic agents challenge. In: Proc. IJCAI 1997 (1997)
Klauck, C., Mueller, H.-J.: Formal Business Process Engineering Based on Graph Grammars. International Journal on Production Economics, Special Issue on Business Process Reengineering (1997) (to appear)
Klush, M., Shehory, O.: Coalition formation among rational information agents. In: Proc. MAAMAW 1996. LNCS (LNAI), vol. 1038, pp. 204–217. Springer, Heidelberg (1996)
Maes, P.: Situated agents can have goals. In: Maes, P. (ed.) Designing Autonomous Agents: Theory and Practice from Biology to Engeneering and Back, pp. 49–70. MIT and Elsevier (1990)
Matyja, O.: Team formation by autonomous agents. MS thesis, Warsaw Institute of Technology, Faculty of Electronics and Informatics (May 1998)
Mukund, M., Sohoni, M.: Keeping track of the latest gossip: Bounded time-stamps suffice. In: Shyamasundar, R.K. (ed.) FSTTCS 1993. LNCS, vol. 761, pp. 199–388. Springer, Heidelberg (1993)
Rao, A.S., Georgeff, M.P.: Modelling rational agents within a BDI-architecture. In: Fikes, R., Sandewall, E. (eds.) Proc. of the 2rd International Conference on Principles of Knowledge Representation and Reasoning (KR 1991), pp. 473–484. Morgan Kauf-mann, San Francisco (1991)
Sandholm, T.W., Lesser, V.R.: Coalition among computationally bounded agents. Artificial Intelligence 94, 99–137 (1997)
Shehory, O.M., Sycara, K., Jha, S.: Multi-agent coordination trough coalition formation. In: Proc. ATAL 1997 (1997)
Scott, R.E.: Linear circuits. Addison-Wesley, Reading (1960)
Tambe, M.: Towards flexible teamwork. Journal of Artificial Intelligence Research 7, 83–124 (1997)
Tanenbaum, A.S.: Computer Networks. Prentice-Hall Inc. Englewood Cliffs (1981)
Wooldridge, M., Jennings, N.R.: Towards a theory of cooperative problem solving. In: Distributed Software Agents and Applications (MAAMAW 1994). LNCS (LNAI), vol. 1069, pp. 40–53. Springer, Heidelberg (1996)
Zlotkin, G., Rosenschein, J.S.: Coalition, cryptography and stability: mechanisms for coalition formation in task oriented domains. In: Proc. AAAI 1994, Seattle, WA, pp. 432–437 (1994)
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 1998 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg
About this paper
Cite this paper
Ambroszkiewicz, S., Matyja, O., Penczek, W. (1998). Team Formation by Self-Interested Mobile Agents. In: Zhang, C., Lukose, D. (eds) Multi-Agent Systems. Theories, Languages and Applications. DAI 1998. Lecture Notes in Computer Science(), vol 1544. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/10693067_1
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/10693067_1
Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg
Print ISBN: 978-3-540-65477-3
Online ISBN: 978-3-540-49241-2
eBook Packages: Springer Book Archive