Towards an Architecture and Theory for Agent Coordination

这项研究涉及开发一种与领域无关的方法来实时、分布式地协调多个代理。它基于通用局部全球规划(GPGP)方法，该方法将协调视为调制当地控制，而不是取代它。该过程通过与每个代理相关联的一组独立于域的协调机制来发生，该协调机制向本地实时调度器发布关于某些任务的重要性以及它们的启动和完成的适当时间的约束。每个协调机制被定义为对当前任务环境中的某些特征的响应。为了构建一种通用的协调方法，有必要有一个底层框架，该框架可以表示任务、任务属性和任务关系的广泛多样性，以便在广泛的领域中实现不同代理的活动之间的有效协调。该框架称为TAEMS(任务分析、环境建模和仿真)。它是一个框架，用来表示复杂计算任务环境的重要方面，它与正式的以代理为中心的方法和实验方法都是兼容的。这项研究的结果将导致开发一个通用的协调模块，该模块可以帮助多智能体系统的设计者建立协调策略。

This research involves the development of a domain independent approach to real-time, distributed coordination of multiple agents. It is based on the GeneralizedPartial Global Planning (GPGP) approach which views coordination as modulating local control, not replacing it. This process occurs via a set of domain-independent coordination mechanisms associated with each agent that posts constraints to the local real-time scheduler about the importance of certain tasks and appropriate times for their initiation and completion. Each coordination mechanism is defined as a response to certain features in the current task environment. In order to construct a generic approach to coordination, it is necessary to have an underlying framework that can represent the wide diversity of tasks, task properties, and task relationships in order to arrive at effective coordination among the activities of different agents in a wide variety of domains. The framework is called TAEMS (Task Analysis, Environment Modeling, and Simulation). It is a framework with which to represent the important aspects of complex computational task environments that is compatible with both formal agent-centered approaches and experimental approaches. The result of this research will lead to the development of a generic coordination module which can help desiginers of multiagent systems to build coordination strategies.