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Cooperative mobile robotics: Antecedents and directions
, 1995
"... There has been increased research interest in systems composed of multiple autonomous mobile robots exhibiting collective behavior. Groups of mobile robots are constructed, with an aim to studying such issues as group architecture, resource conflict, origin of cooperation, learning, and geometric pr ..."
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Cited by 255 (3 self)
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There has been increased research interest in systems composed of multiple autonomous mobile robots exhibiting collective behavior. Groups of mobile robots are constructed, with an aim to studying such issues as group architecture, resource conflict, origin of cooperation, learning, and geometric problems. As yet, few applications of collective robotics have been reported, and supporting theory is still in its formative stages. In this paper, we give a critical survey of existing works and discuss open problems in this field, emphasizing the various theoretical issues that arise in the study of cooperative robotics. We describe the intellectual heritages that have guided early research, as well as possible additions to the set of existing motivations. 1
Social Structure from Multiple Networks
- American Journal of Sociology
, 1976
"... Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use, available at http://www.jstor.org/about/terms.html. JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use provides, in part, that unless you have obtained prior permission, you may not download an entire issue of a journal ..."
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Cited by 79 (2 self)
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Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use, available at http://www.jstor.org/about/terms.html. JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use provides, in part, that unless you have obtained prior permission, you may not download an entire issue of a journal or multiple copies of articles, and you may use content in the JSTOR archive only for your personal, non-commercial use. Please contact the publisher regarding any further use of this work. Publisher contact information may be obtained at
Routing in Telecommunications Networks With "smart" Ant-Like Agents
- In Proceedings of IATA'98, Second Int. Workshop on Intelligent Agents for Telecommunication Applications. Lectures Notes in AI
, 1998
"... . A simple mechanism is presented, based on ant-like agents, for routing and load balancing in telecommunications networks, following the initial works of Appleby and Stewart (1994) and Schoonderwoerd et al. (1997). In the present work, agents are very similar to those proposed by Schoonderwoerd et ..."
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Cited by 40 (1 self)
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. A simple mechanism is presented, based on ant-like agents, for routing and load balancing in telecommunications networks, following the initial works of Appleby and Stewart (1994) and Schoonderwoerd et al. (1997). In the present work, agents are very similar to those proposed by Schoonderwoerd et al. (1997), but a r e supplemented with a simplified dynamic programming capability, initially experimented by Gurin (1997) with more complex agents, which is shown to significantly improve the network's relaxation and its response to perturbations. Topic area: Intelligent agents and network management 2 1. Introduction 1.1 Routing in telecommunications networks Routing is a mechanism that allows calls to be transmitted from a source to a destination through a sequence of intermediate switching stations or nodes, because not all points are directly connected: the cost of completely connecting a network becomes prohibitive for more than a few nodes. Routing selects routes that meet the o...
Artificial Social Systems
- Computers and AI
, 1995
"... An artificial social system is a set of restrictions on agents' behaviors in a multiagent environment. Its role is to allow agents to coexist in a shared environment and pursue their respective goals in the presence of other agents. This paper argues that artificial social systems exist in practical ..."
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Cited by 36 (0 self)
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An artificial social system is a set of restrictions on agents' behaviors in a multiagent environment. Its role is to allow agents to coexist in a shared environment and pursue their respective goals in the presence of other agents. This paper argues that artificial social systems exist in practically every multi-agent system, and play a major role in the performance and effectiveness of the agents. We propose artificial social systems as an explicit and formal object of study, and investigate several basic issues that arise in their design. Keywords: Social Laws, Multi-Agent Systems, Off-Line Design This work was supported in part by the US-Israel Binational Foundation. The work of the first author was supported by an Alon Fellowship, and by a Helen and Marcus Kimmelman Career Development Chair. The second author was supported in part by an Eshkol Fellowship of the Israeli Ministry of Science and Technology, and later by the Air Force Office of Scientific Research. Part of the resea...
Cooperative Problem Solving
- COMPUTATION: THE MICRO AND THE MACRO VIEW
, 1992
"... We present a quantitative assessment of the value of cooperation for solving constraint satisfaction problems through a series of experiments, as well as a general theory of cooperative problem solving. These experiments, using both hierarchical and non-hierarchical cooperation, clearly exhibit a ..."
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Cited by 26 (2 self)
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We present a quantitative assessment of the value of cooperation for solving constraint satisfaction problems through a series of experiments, as well as a general theory of cooperative problem solving. These experiments, using both hierarchical and non-hierarchical cooperation, clearly exhibit a universal improvement in performance that results from cooperation. We also show both theoretically and experimentally the super-linear speed-up that results from having a diverse collection of skills among the cooperating agents. Our results suggest an alternative methodology to existing techniques for solving constraint satisfaction problems in computer science and distributed artificial intelligence.
Self-Organized Stigmergic Document Maps: Environment as a Mechanism for . . .
- CENTRO UNIV. DE MÉRIDA
, 2002
"... Social insect societies and more specifically ant colonies, are distributed systems that, in spite of the simplicity of their individuals, present a highly structured social organization. As a result of this organization, ant colonies can accomplish complex tasks that in some cases exceed the indivi ..."
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Cited by 24 (7 self)
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Social insect societies and more specifically ant colonies, are distributed systems that, in spite of the simplicity of their individuals, present a highly structured social organization. As a result of this organization, ant colonies can accomplish complex tasks that in some cases exceed the individual capabilities of a single ant. The study of ant colonies behavior and of their self-organizing capabilities is of interest to knowledge retrieval/ management and decision support systems sciences, because it provides models of distributed adaptive organization which are useful to solve difficult optimization, classification, and distributed control problems, among others. In the present work we overview some models derived from the observation of real ants, emphasizing the role played by stigmergy as distributed communication paradigm, and we present a novel strategy to tackle unsupervised clustering as well as data retrieval problems. The present ant clustering system (ACLUSTER) avoids not only short-term memory based strategies, as well as the use of several artificial ant types (using different speeds), present in some recent approaches. Moreover and according to our knowledge, this is also the first application of ant systems into textual document clustering.
How Swarms Build Cognitive Maps
- In Steels, L. (Ed.): The Biology and Technology of Intelligent Autonomous Agents, 144, NATO ASI Series
, 1995
"... . Swarms of social insects construct trails and networks of regular traffic via a process of pheromone laying and following. These patterns constitute what is known in brain science as a cognitive map. The main difference lies in the fact that the insects write their spatial memories in the environm ..."
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Cited by 21 (1 self)
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. Swarms of social insects construct trails and networks of regular traffic via a process of pheromone laying and following. These patterns constitute what is known in brain science as a cognitive map. The main difference lies in the fact that the insects write their spatial memories in the environment, while the mammalian cognitive map lies inside the brain. This analogy can be more than a poetic image, and can be further justified by a direct comparison with the neural processes associated with the construction of cognitive maps in the hippocampus. We investigate via analysis and numerical simulation the formation of trails and networks in a collection of insect-like agents. The agents interact in simple ways which are determined by experiments with real ants. 1 Introduction The self-organization of neurons into a brain-like structure, and the selforganization of ants into a swarm are similar in many respects. The former, for obvious reasons, has received more attention recently. Ho...
Efficiency and Task Allocation in Prey Retrieval
- Proceedings of the First International Workshop on Biologically Inspired Approaches to Advanced Information Technology (Bio-ADIT2004), Lecture Notes in Computer Science
, 2004
"... Prey retrieval, also known as foraging, is a widely used test application in collective robotics. The task consists in searching for objects spread in the environment and in bringing them to a specific place called nest. Scientific issues usually concern efficient exploration, mapping, communication ..."
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Cited by 19 (8 self)
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Prey retrieval, also known as foraging, is a widely used test application in collective robotics. The task consists in searching for objects spread in the environment and in bringing them to a specific place called nest. Scientific issues usually concern efficient exploration, mapping, communication among agents, task coordination and allocation, and conflict resolution. In particular, interferences among robots reduce the efficiency of the group in performing the task. Several works in the literature investigate how the control system of each robot or some form of middle/long range communication can reduce the interferences. In this work, we show that a simple adaptation mechanism, inspired by ants' behaviour and based only on information locally available to each robot, is effective in increasing the group efficiency. The same adaptation mechanism is also responsible for self-organised task allocation in the group.
Gradient Driven Self-Organizing Systems
, 1993
"... The aim of this paper is to discuss and present some experimental data on the use of optical, chemical and ultrasound sensors to control the motion of single and cooperating robots. The distinctive feature is that in both cases the motion of the robots is not driven by a localized target (e.g. a lig ..."
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Cited by 17 (0 self)
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The aim of this paper is to discuss and present some experimental data on the use of optical, chemical and ultrasound sensors to control the motion of single and cooperating robots. The distinctive feature is that in both cases the motion of the robots is not driven by a localized target (e.g. a light, or a sound) but by a concentration gradient such as the one generated by a gas leak. Experiments using a simple optical sensor reading a variable density pattern of dark spots painted on the ground plane, is presented along with experiments performed using simple chemical sensors measuring the local gradient of a substance. Different strategies will be discussed based upon different configurations of the sensing devices and reflexive motor controls. The goal of the experiment is to analyze the performance of simple autonomous robots in reaching the point of highest concentration (i.e. the gas leak). This performance has been analyzed for single robots and for cooperating robots using a v...

