Asynchronous Teams: Cooperation Schemes for Autonomous Agents Export

@article{mip-talukdar, abstract = {Experiments over a variety of optimization problems indicate that scale-effective convergence is an emergent behavior of certain computer-based agents, provided these agents are organized into an asynchronous team (A-Team). An A-Team is a problem-solving architecture in which the agents are autonomous and cooperate by modifying one another\‘s trial solutions. These solutions circulate continually. Convergence is said to occur if and when a persistent solution appears. Convergence is said to be scale-effective if the quality of the persistent solution increases with the number of agents, and the speed of its appearance increases with the number of computers. This paper uses a traveling salesman problem to illustrate scale-effective behavior and develops Markov models that explain its occurrence in A-Teams, particularly, how autonomous agents, without strategic planning or centralized coordination, can converge to solutions of arbitrarily high quality. The models also perdict two properties that remain to be experimentally confirmed:}, address = {Hingham, MA, USA}, author = {Talukdar, Sarosh and Baerentzen, Lars and Gove, Andrew and De Souza, Pedro}, citeulike-article-id = {4919714}, citeulike-linkout-0 = {http://portal.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=594993}, citeulike-linkout-1 = {http://dx.doi.org/10.1023/A:1009669824615}, doi = {10.1023/A:1009669824615}, issn = {1381-1231}, journal = {Journal of Heuristics}, number = {4}, pages = {295--321}, posted-at = {2009-06-21 04:52:02}, priority = {2}, publisher = {Kluwer Academic Publishers}, title = {Asynchronous Teams: Cooperation Schemes for Autonomous Agents}, url = {http://dx.doi.org/10.1023/A:1009669824615}, volume = {4}, year = {1998} }

TY - JOUR ID - mip-talukdar L3 - citeulike-article-id:4919714 N2 - Experiments over a variety of optimization problems indicate that scale-effective convergence is an emergent behavior of certain computer-based agents, provided these agents are organized into an asynchronous team (A-Team). An A-Team is a problem-solving architecture in which the agents are autonomous and cooperate by modifying one another‘s trial solutions. These solutions circulate continually. Convergence is said to occur if and when a persistent solution appears. Convergence is said to be scale-effective if the quality of the persistent solution increases with the number of agents, and the speed of its appearance increases with the number of computers. This paper uses a traveling salesman problem to illustrate scale-effective behavior and develops Markov models that explain its occurrence in A-Teams, particularly, how autonomous agents, without strategic planning or centralized coordination, can converge to solutions of arbitrarily high quality. The models also perdict two properties that remain to be experimentally confirmed: IS - 4 JF - Journal of Heuristics SN - 1381-1231 AD - Hingham, MA, USA EP - 321 TI - Asynchronous Teams: Cooperation Schemes for Autonomous Agents PB - Kluwer Academic Publishers VL - 4 SP - 295 AU - Talukdar, Sarosh AU - Baerentzen, Lars AU - Gove, Andrew AU - De Souza, Pedro PY - 1998/// UR - http://dx.doi.org/10.1023/A:1009669824615 ER -