Effective Coordination of Multiple Intelligent Agents For Command and Control

Effective Coordination of Multiple Intelligent
Agents for Command and Control

The Robotics Institute
Carnegie Mellon University
PI: Katia Sycara
http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~sycara
Key Personnel: Onn Shehory

R. Michael Young
http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~softagents
Research Objectives
• Develop an adaptive, self-organizing collection of

intelligent agents that interact with the humans and
each other to
– integrate information management and decision support
– anticipate and satisfy human information processing and
problem solving needs
– perform real-time synchronization of domain activities
– notify users and other each other about significant changes
in the environment
– adapt to user, task and situation
Technical Challenges
• What coordination mechanisms are effective for large

numbers of sophisticated agents?
• What are the scaling up properties of these coordination
mechanisms?
• How do they perform with respect to dimensions, such as task
complexity, interdependence, agent heterogeneity, solution
quality?
• What guarantees do these mechanisms provide regarding
predictability of overall system behavior?
• Do they mitigate against harmful system behaviors?
• How to achieve effective human-agent coordination?
The RETSINA
Multi-Agent Architecture
User 1 User 2 User u
distributed Goal and Task
adaptive Specifications Results
collections of Interface
InterfaceAgent
Agent1 1 Interface
InterfaceAgent
Agent22 Interface
InterfaceAgent
Agenti i
information agents Tasks Solutions

that coordinate to Task Agent 1
Task Agent 1
Task Agent 2
Task Agent 2
Task Agent t
Task Agent t
retrieve, filter and
fuse Info & Service Information Integration
Requests Conflict Resolution Replies
information
relevant to the user, MiddleAgent 2
MiddleAgent 2
task and situation, Advertisements
Info Agent n
Info Agent n
as well as Info Agent 1

Info Agent 1
Answers
anticipate user's Info
Info Info
information needs. Queries Info
Source 1
Source 1
Info
Info
Source 2
Source m
Source m
Source 2
Capability-based coordination
• Open, uncertain environment:
– Agents leave and join unpredictably
– Agents have heterogeneous capabilities
– Replication increases robustness
• Agent location via Middle agents:
– Matchmakers match advertised capabilities
– Blackboard agents collect requests
– Broker agents process both
Capability-based coordination (cont)
• Advertisement:
– Includes agent capability, cost, etc.
– Supports interoperability
– Agent interface to the agent society independent of agent
internal structure
• We will test scale-up properties of capability-based
coordination
Cooperation
• Problems with current methods:
– Mechanisms not tested in real-world MAS
– Simulations?size small (~20 agents)
– Complex mechanism do not scale up
• We will provide algorithms for efficient group
formation
Cooperation - solutions (continued)
• Approach:
 Very large systems (millions of agents):
– Constant complexity cooperation method
– Based on models of multi-particle interaction
 Structural organization:
– Trade-off between reduced complexity and loss of
autonomy
– Effect on system flexibility, robustness
Competition and Markets
• Limited resources result in competition
• Market-based approaches:
– Assume that agent can find one another
– Otherwise, convergence results do not hold
• Approach:
 Utilize financial option pricing:
• Prioritize tasks by dynamic valuation
• Allows flexible contingent contracting
• Analysis of large MAS via economics methods
Competition and Markets (contd)
 Combine our capability-based coordination with
market mechanisms
 Mechanism design:
– Design enforceable mechanisms for self-interested agents
– Resolve Tragedy of Commons by pricing schemes.
– Devise mechanisms to motivate truthful behavior
Coordinating Agents With Human Users
• Agent Task Delegation
– Languages for task description and delegation
– Interactive planning and execution
• Extending RETSINA’s graphical task editor
• In-Context Information Management for C2
– Dependent upon user preferences, task context and evolving situation
– Agents’ responsibilities
• Represent users’ task environment
• Monitor significant changes
• Provide appropriate notification to user or responsible agent
• Learn to track and anticipate user’s information needs
• Learn appropriate times and methods for presenting information
Research Plan
• Agent Control
– mapping of task model and requirements to the appropriate
coordination strategy
– mapping of constraints of the environment, other agents and available
resources to appropriate coordination strategy
– experimental evaluation, analysis and refinement
• Agent Coordination
– design/refine coordination algorithm
– implement appropriate experimental infrastructure
– implement the coordination strategy and evaluate along different
dimensions
– analyze the results and refine algorithm design and experimental
process
Additional Slides
Major Project Deliverables
• Prototype multiagent system that aids human military planners
to perform effective “in context” information gathering,
execution monitoring, and problem solving
• Reusable “agent shell” that includes domain independent
components for representing and controlling agent
functionality, so that agents can be easily produced for
different types of tasks
• Effective multiagent coordination protocols, that are scalable,
efficient and adaptive to user task and planning context
• <ulti agent coordination infrastructure consisting of a suite of
tools for reliable and low cost building and experimenting
with flexible multiagent systems
Agent Coordination in RETSINA
Build information management agents for C2 based on

RETSINA mechanisms for agent coordination
• Goal and task structures provide user and agent context
• Information agents form and execute plans that
– involve queries for future information monitoring
– take situational constraints into account
– work around notification deadlines
• Build upon existing base of information management agents

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Effective Coordination of Multiple Intelligent

Agents for Command and Control

Key Personnel: Onn Shehory

• Develop an adaptive, self-organizing collection of

• What coordination mechanisms are effective for large

information agents Tasks Solutions

as well as Info Agent 1

Build information management agents for C2 based on

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