Enhancing Team Automation in Hostile and Dynamic Environments
The aim of this research is to integrate coordination and cooperation to enhance autonomous team automation using agent technology. An example includes the coordination of a swarm of Unmanned Air Vehicles (UAV’s) in a hostile environment. There has been substantial research conducted in this area, however the coordination aspect that have been implemented are either specific to an application or difficult to implement. As a result, a rigid and complex architecture is required. Implementing the concepts of cooperation, collaboration and communication in coordination may enhance performance; reduce complexity, and assist in applying coordination in a simple manner.
This research begins by defining what constitutes an agent and a MAS. This helps to identify both the requirements of a MAS, and which AI technologies are appropriate for agents. The introduction of coordination through cooperation, collaboration and communication contributes to the improvement of the flow of information. This, in turn, closes the gap between “smart agents” and “dumb agent”[1-3]. The proposed techniques will be implemented using a real-time system, and evaluated with other systems that have similar features. As a result, this research will be extended to solve any limitations found in coordination that may arise. This will lead to more powerful, effective, and accepted techniques which assist in solving complex real-life scenarios.
References
[1] Consoli, A., Tweedale, J. and Jain, L.C., Aligning Cognitive Models using AC3M, Proceedings of the First International Conference on Emerging Trends in Engineering and Technology, IEEE Computer Society Press, 2008, pp. 882-886.[2] Consoli, A., Tweedale, J. and Jain, L.C., An Architecture for Agent Coordination and Cooperation, Lecture Notes in Artificial Intelligence, KES 2007, LNAI 4692, Springer-Verlag, Germany, 2007, pp. 917-924.
[3] Consoli, A., Tweedale, J. and Jain, L., The Link Between Agent Coordination and Cooperation, in IFIP International Federation for Information Processing, Vol. 228, Intelligent Information Processing III, Springer-Verlag, 2006, pp. 11-19, Chapter 2.