Multi-agent domains consisting of teams of agents that need to collaborate in an adversarial environment offer challenging research opportunities. In this article, we introduce periodic team synchronization (PTS) domains as time-critical environments in which agents act autonomously with low communication, but in which they can periodically synchronize in a full-communication setting. The two main contributions of this article are a flexible team agent structure and a method for inter-agent communication in domains with unreliable, single-channel, low-bandwidth communication. First, the novel team agent structure allows agents to capture and reason about team agreements. We achieve collaboration between agents through the introduction of formations. A formation decomposes the task space defining a set of roles. Homogeneous agents can flexibly switch roles within formations, and agents can change formations dynamically, according to pre-defined triggers to be evaluated at run-time. This flexibility increases the performance of the overall team. Our teamwork structure further includes pre-planning for frequent situations. Second, the novel communication method is designed for use during the lowcommunication periods in PTS domains. It overcomes the obstacles to inter-agent communication in multi-agent environments with unreliable, high-cost, low-bandwidth communication. We fully implemented both the flexible teamwork structure and the communication method in the domain of simulated robotic soccer, and conducted controlled empirical experiments to verify their effectiveness. In addition, our simulator team made it to the semi-finals of the RoboCup-97 competition, in which 29 teams participated.

Multi-agent domains consisting of teams of agents that need to collaborate in an adversarial environment offer challenging research opportunities. In this paper, we introduce periodic team synchronization domains, as time-critical environments in which agents act autonomously with limited communication, but they can periodically synchronize in a full-communication setting. We present a team agent structure that allows for an agent to capture and reason about team agreements. We achieve collaboration between agents through the introduction of formations. A formation decomposes the task space defininga set of roles. Homogeneous agents

During the 1940s, under the pseudonym of Will Stewart, Jack Williamson published a series of fictional stories describing a process for attaching atmospheres to planets in order to make them capable of sustaining life. ‘Terraforming, ’ the term he

Proactive information delivery is critical to achieving effective teamwork. However, existing theories do not adequately address proactive information delivery. This paper presents a formal framework for proactive information delivery in agent teamwork. First, the concept of information need is introduced. Second, a new modal operator, InfoNeed is used to represent information needs. The properties of the InfoNeed operator and its relationships to other mental modal operators are examined, four types of information needs are formally identified, and axioms for anticipating the information needs of other agents are proposed and justified. Third, the axiom characterizing chains of helpful behavior in large agent teams is given. Fourth, the semantics for two proactive communicative acts (ProInform and 3PTSubscribe) is given using a reformulation of the Cohen-Levesque semantics for communicative acts in terms of the SharedPlans formalism of Grosz and Kraus. The work in this paper not only provides a better understanding of the underlying assumptions required to justify proactive information delivery behavior, but also provides a coherent basis for the specification and design of agent teams with proactive information delivery capabilities.

. This paper proposes an organizational model for a multiagent

Proactive information sharing is a challenging issue faced by intelligence agencies in effectively making critical decisions under time pressure in areas related to homeland security. Motivated by psychological studies on human teams, a team-oriented agent architecture -- CAST (Collaborative Agents for Simulating Teamwork), was implemented to allow agents in a team to anticipate the information needs of teammates and help them with their information needs proactively, effectively, and timely. In this paper, we extend CAST with a decision-making module . Through two sets of experiments in a simulated battlefield, we evaluate the effectiveness of the decision theoretic proactive communication strategy in improving team performance, and the effectiveness of information fusion as an approach to alleviating the information overload problem faced by distributed decision makers.

. 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 ...

In most multiagent systems with communicating agents, the agents have the luxury of using reliable, multi-step negotiation protocols. They can do so primarily when communication is reliable and the cost of communication relative to other actions is small. Conversely, this paper considers multiagent environments with unreliable, high-cost communication. This paper presents techniques for dealing with the obstacles to inter-agent communication in such environments. A successful prototype system is fully implemented and tested in the simulated robotic soccer domain. Topic Areas: Communication languages and protocols; Organization and social structure

Many new applications for robots require them to work alongside people as capable members of human-robot teams. These include—in the long term—robots for homes, hospitals, and offices, but already exist in more advanced settings, such as space exploration. The work reported in this paper is part of an ongoing collaboration with NASA JSC to develop Robonaut, a humanoid robot envisioned to work with human astronauts on maintenance operations for space missions. To date, work with Robonaut has mainly investigated performing a joint task with a human in which the robot is being teleoperated. However, perceptive disorientation, sensory noise, and control delays make teleoperation cognitively exhausting even for a highly skilled operator. Control delays in long range teleoperation also make shoulder-to-shoulder teamwork difficult. These issues motivate our work to make robots collaborating with people more autonomous. Our work focuses on a scenario of a human and an autonomous humanoid robot working together shoulder-to-shoulder, sharing the workspace and the objects required to complete a task. A robotic member of such a team must be able to work towards a shared goal, and be in agreement with the human as to the sequence of actions that will be required

An adequate formulation of collective intentionality is crucial for understanding group activity and for modeling the mental state of participants in such activities. Although work on collective intentionality in philosophy, artificial intelligence, and cognitive science has many points of agreement, several key issues remain under debate. This paper argues that the dynamics of intention—in particular, the interrelated processes of plan-related group decision making and intention updating— play crucial roles in an explanation of collective intentionality. Furthermore, it is in these dynamic aspects that coordinated group activity differs most from individual activity. The paper specifies a model of the dynamics of agent intentions in the context of collaborative activity. Its integrated treatment of group decision making and coordinated updating of group-related intentions fills an important gap in prior accounts of collective intentionality, thus helping to resolve a long-standing debate about the nature of intentions in group activity. The paper also defines an architecture for collaboration-capable computer agents that satisfies the constraints of the model and is a natural extension of the standard architecture for resource-bounded agents operating as individuals. The new architecture is both more principled and more complete than prior architectures for collaborative multi-agent systems.