An ARTMAP-incorporated Multi-Agent System for Building Intelligent Heat Management

This paper presents an ARTMAP-incorporated multi-agent system (MAS) for building heat management, which aims to maintain the desired space temperature defined by the building occupants (thermal comfort management) and improve energy efficiency by intelligently controlling the energy flow and usage in the building (building energy control). Existing MAS typically uses rule-based approaches to describe the behaviours and the processes of its agents, and the rules are fixed. The incorporation of artificial neural network (ANN) techniques to the agents can provide for the required online learning and adaptation capabilities. A three-layer MAS is proposed for building heat management and ARTMAP is incorporated into the agents so as to facilitate online learning and adaptation capabilities. Simulation results demonstrate that ARTMAP incorporated MAS provides better (automated) energy control and thermal comfort management for a building environment in comparison to its existing rule-based MAS approach

Mixed Initiative Systems for Human-Swarm Interaction: Opportunities and Challenges

Human-swarm interaction (HSI) involves a number of human factors impacting human behaviour throughout the interaction. As the technologies used within HSI advance, it is more tempting to increase the level of swarm autonomy within the interaction to reduce the workload on humans. Yet, the prospective negative effects of high levels of autonomy on human situational awareness can hinder this process. Flexible autonomy aims at trading-off these effects by changing the level of autonomy within the interaction when required; with mixed-initiatives combining human preferences and automation's recommendations to select an appropriate level of autonomy at a certain point of time. However, the effective implementation of mixed-initiative systems raises fundamental questions on how to combine human preferences and automation recommendations, how to realise the selected level of autonomy, and what the future impacts on the cognitive states of a human are. We explore open challenges that hamper the process of developing effective flexible autonomy. We then highlight the potential benefits of using system modelling techniques in HSI by illustrating how they provide HSI designers with an opportunity to evaluate different strategies for assessing the state of the mission and for adapting the level of autonomy within the interaction to maximise mission success metrics.Comment: Author version, accepted at the 2018 IEEE Annual Systems Modelling Conference, Canberra, Australi