Strategies of Cooperation in Distributed Problem Solving

Abstract

Distributed artificial intelligence is concerned with problem solving that is done by groups of agents. This Note describes strategies of cooperation that groups require to solve shared tasks effectively. We discuss such strategies first in a domain-independent fashion, and then in the context of a specific group problem-solving application: collision avoidance in air traffic control. We begin by contrasting the methodologies, difficulties, and opportunities of distributed and centralized problem solving. From this analysis, we infer a set of requirements on the information-gathering and organizational policies of group problem-solving agents. We then discuss a set of distributed problem solvers that we have developed in the domain of air traffic control and describe some experimental findings with the cooperative strategies used. In particular, we note large task-dependent differences in processing times, communication loads, and system errors between the several cooperative strategies.

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Document Details

Document Type
Technical Report
Publication Date
Oct 01, 1983
Accession Number
ADA136527

Entities

People

  • David L McArthur
  • Randall Steeb
  • Stephanie Cammarata

Organizations

  • RAND Corporation

Tags

DTIC Thesaurus Topics

  • Air Traffic
  • Aircrafts
  • Artificial Intelligence
  • Bandwidth
  • Collision Avoidance
  • Collisions
  • Communication Channels
  • Computations
  • Cooperation
  • Detection
  • Environment
  • Errors
  • Information Processing
  • Organizational Structure
  • Retransmission
  • Sequences
  • Traffic

Fields of Study

  • Computer science

Readers

  • Agent-Based Social Robotics and Mobile-Assisted Learning in Virtual Environments.
  • Team-Based Human-Centered Cognitive Task Decision Making and Information Performance.

Technology Areas

  • AI & ML
  • AI & ML - DoD AI Strategy
  • AI & ML - Machine Learning Algorithms