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8 Multi-agents








                                      Chapter Objectives:

                                        Define the types of control regimes, cooperation strategies, and goals in multi-
                                         agents.
                                        Given a description of an intended task, a collection of robots, and the
                                         permitted interactions between robots, design a multi-agent system and
                                         describe the system in terms of heterogeneity, control, cooperation, and
                                         goals.

                                        Compute the social entropy of a team.

                                        Be able to program a set of homogeneous reactive robots to accomplish a
                                         foraging task.

                                        Describe use of social rules and internal motivation for emergent societal
                                         behavior.

                                8.1   Overview


                                      This chapter explores artificial intelligence methods for coordinating and
                                      controlling collections of mobile robots working on completing a task. Col-
                                      lections of two or more mobile robots working together are often referred to
                            SOCIETIES  as teams or societies of multiple mobile robots, or more concisely multi-agents.
                        MULTI-AGENTS    Multi-agent teams are desirable for many reasons. In the case of planetary
                                      explorers or removing land mines, more robots should be able to cover more
                                      area. Like ants and other insects, many cheap robots working together could
                                      replace a single expensive robot, making multi-agents more cost effective.
                        SWARM ROBOTS  Indeed, the term swarm robots is becoming popular to refer to large numbers
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