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Sophisticated and distributed: The transportation domain

Exploring emergent functionality in a real-world application

  • Conference paper
  • First Online:
From Reaction to Cognition (MAAMAW 1993)

Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science ((LNAI,volume 957))

Abstract

In this paper, we present the MARS multi-agent system. MARS models a society of cooperating transportation companies. Emphasis is placed on how the functionality of the system as a whole — the solution of the global scheduling problem — emerges from local decision-making and problem-solving strategies, and on how variations of these strategies influence the performance of the system. We address three techniques of Distributed Artificial Intelligence (DAI) which are used for tackling the hard problems that occur in this domain, and which together give rise to the emergence of a solution to the global scheduling problem: (1) cooperation among the agents, (2) task decomposition and task allocation, and (3) decentralised planning. Finally, we briefly describe the implementation of the system and provide experimental results which show how different strategies for task decomposition and cooperation influence the behaviour of the system.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. DFKI, Stuhlsatzenhausweg 3, D-66123, Saarbrücken

    K. Fischer, N. Kuhn, H. J. Müller, J. P. Müller & M. Pischel

Authors
  1. K. Fischer
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  2. N. Kuhn
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  3. H. J. Müller
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  4. J. P. Müller
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  5. M. Pischel
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Editor information

Cristiano Castelfranchi Jean-Pierre Müller

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© 1995 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg

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Fischer, K., Kuhn, N., Müller, H.J., Müller, J.P., Pischel, M. (1995). Sophisticated and distributed: The transportation domain. In: Castelfranchi, C., Müller, JP. (eds) From Reaction to Cognition. MAAMAW 1993. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 957. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/BFb0027060

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BFb0027060

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  • Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-540-60155-5

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-540-49532-1

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