190 research outputs found
Declarative vs Rule-based Control for Flocking Dynamics
The popularity of rule-based flocking models, such as Reynolds' classic
flocking model, raises the question of whether more declarative flocking models
are possible. This question is motivated by the observation that declarative
models are generally simpler and easier to design, understand, and analyze than
operational models. We introduce a very simple control law for flocking based
on a cost function capturing cohesion (agents want to stay together) and
separation (agents do not want to get too close). We refer to it as {\textit
declarative flocking} (DF). We use model-predictive control (MPC) to define
controllers for DF in centralized and distributed settings. A thorough
performance comparison of our declarative flocking with Reynolds' model, and
with more recent flocking models that use MPC with a cost function based on
lattice structures, demonstrate that DF-MPC yields the best cohesion and least
fragmentation, and maintains a surprisingly good level of geometric regularity
while still producing natural flock shapes similar to those produced by
Reynolds' model. We also show that DF-MPC has high resilience to sensor noise.Comment: 7 Page
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Using agent based simulation to empirically examine complexity in carbon footprint business process
Through the critical analysis of the extant literature, it is observed that Simulation is widely used as a research method in Natural Sciences, Engineering and Social Sciences, in addition to argumentation and formalisation as the third way of carrying out research. Simulation is not so widely used in Business and Management research as it ought to have been, though this is changing for the better with the technological advances in computers and their computational power. These technological advances enhance the capability of theoretical research models, in defining a problem and their use in empirically examining a solution to the problem in simulated reality, like never before. Management journal searches for “Simulation and Complexity Theory” returned nil or zero returns, which explain that this combination is not popular in management research, though they are used individually more often. The major objective of this paper is to analyse some of the conceptual (or theoretical) and methodological (or empirical) contributions that Agent Based Simulation and Complexity Theory can make to the business and management community in their business process related research In view of this, some basic ideas are discussed of using Agent Based Simulation as a method in Business and Management Studies research and how an Agent Based Model can be applied to a business process as complex as Carbon Footprint. It is in this context that the use of Complexity as the base theory to empirically examine a business process is discussed. Throughout this article, our research on complex adaptive systems (e.g., Accounting Information System) in continuously changing organisations managing complex business processes (e.g., Carbon Footprint business process) is considered as the basis for illustrating some of the concepts. Through this article, avenues for further management research using these tools and methodology are suggested
Multi-agent Communication Protocols with Emergent Behaviour
The emergent behaviour of a multiagent system depends on the component agents and how
they interact. A critical part of interaction between agents is communication. This thesis
presents a multi-agent system communication model for physical moving agents. The work
presented in this thesis provides all the tools to create a physical multi-agent communication
system. The model integrates different agent technologies at both the micro and macro level.
The micro structure involves the architecture of the individual components in the system
whilst the macro structure involves the interaction relationships between these individual
components in the system.
Regarding the micro structure of the system, the model provides the description of a
novel hybrid BDI-Blackboard architectured agent that builds-in a hybrid of reactive and
deliberative agent. The macro structure of the system, provided by this model, provides
the operational specifications of the communication protocols. The thesis presents a theory
of communication that integrates an animal intelligence technique together with a cognitive
intelligence one. This results in a local co-ordination of movements, and global task coordination.
Accordingly, agents are designed to communicate with other agents in order to
coordinate their movements via a set of behavioural rules. These behavioural rules allow
a simple directed flocking behaviour to emerge. A flocking algorithm is used because it
satisfies a major objective, i.e. it has a real time response to local environmental changes
and minimises the cost of path planning. A higher level communication mechanism is
implemented for task distribution that is carried out via a blackboard conversation and
ii
negotiation process with a ground based controller. All the tasks are distributed as team
tasks. A novel utilization of speech acts as communication utterances through a blackboard
negotiation process is proposed.
In order to implement the proposed communication model, a virtual environment is
built that satisfies the realism of representing the agents, environment, and the sensors
as well as representing the actions. The virtual environment used in the work is built
as a semi-immersive full-scale environment and provides the visualisation tools required
to test, modify, compare and evaluate different behaviours under different conditions. The
visualization tools allow the user to visualize agents negotiations and interacting with them.
The 3D visualisation and simulation tools allow the communication protocol to be tested and
the emergent behaviour to be seen in an easy and understandable manner. The developed
virtual environment can be used as a toolkit to test different communication protocols and
different agent’s architecture in real time
An STL-based Formulation of Resilience in Cyber-Physical Systems
Resiliency is the ability to quickly recover from a violation and avoid
future violations for as long as possible. Such a property is of fundamental
importance for Cyber-Physical Systems (CPS), and yet, to date, there is no
widely agreed-upon formal treatment of CPS resiliency. We present an STL-based
framework for reasoning about resiliency in CPS in which resiliency has a
syntactic characterization in the form of an STL-based Resiliency Specification
(SRS). Given an arbitrary STL formula , time bounds and
, the SRS of , , is the STL formula
, specifying
that recovery from a violation of occur within time
(recoverability), and subsequently that be maintained for duration
(durability). These -expressions, which are atoms in our SRS logic,
can be combined using STL operators, allowing one to express composite
resiliency specifications, e.g., multiple SRSs must hold simultaneously, or the
system must eventually be resilient. We define a quantitative semantics for
SRSs in the form of a Resilience Satisfaction Value (ReSV) function and
prove its soundness and completeness w.r.t. STL's Boolean semantics. The
-value for atoms is a singleton set containing a
pair quantifying recoverability and durability. The -value for a composite
SRS formula results in a set of non-dominated recoverability-durability pairs,
given that the ReSVs of subformulas might not be directly comparable (e.g., one
subformula has superior durability but worse recoverability than another). To
the best of our knowledge, this is the first multi-dimensional quantitative
semantics for an STL-based logic. Two case studies demonstrate the practical
utility of our approach.Comment: 16 pages excluding references and appendix (23 pages in total), 6
figure
Interaction and Intelligent Behavior
We introduce basic behaviors as primitives for control and learning in situated, embodied agents interacting in complex domains. We propose methods for selecting, formally specifying, algorithmically implementing, empirically evaluating, and combining behaviors from a basic set. We also introduce a general methodology for automatically constructing higher--level behaviors by learning to select from this set. Based on a formulation of reinforcement learning using conditions, behaviors, and shaped reinforcement, out approach makes behavior selection learnable in noisy, uncertain environments with stochastic dynamics. All described ideas are validated with groups of up to 20 mobile robots performing safe--wandering, following, aggregation, dispersion, homing, flocking, foraging, and learning to forage
The influence of limited visual sensing on the Reynolds flocking algorithm
The interest in multi-drone systems flourished in the last decade and their application is promising in many fields. We believe that in order to make drone swarms flying smoothly and reliably in real-world scenarios we need a first intermediate step which consists in the analysis of the effects of limited sensing on the behavior of the swarm. In nature, the central sensor modality often used for achieving flocking is vision. In this work, we study how the reduction in the field of view and the orientation of the visual sensors affect the performance of the Reynolds flocking algorithm used to control the swarm. To quantify the impact of limited visual sensing, we introduce different metrics such as (i) order, (ii) safety, (iii) union and (iv) connectivity. As Nature suggests, our results confirm that lateral vision is essential for coordinating the movements of the individuals. Moreover, the analysis we provide will simplify the tuning of the Reynolds flocking algorithm which is crucial for real-world deployment and, especially for aerial swarms, it depends on the envisioned application. We achieve the results presented in this paper through extensive Monte-Carlo simulations and integrate them with the use of genetic algorithm optimization
Partitioning Method for Emergent Behavior Systems Modeled by Agent-Based Simulations
Used to describe some interesting and usually unanticipated pattern or behavior, the term emergence is often associated with time-evolutionary systems comprised of relatively large numbers of interacting yet simple entities. A significant amount of previous research has recognized the emergence phenomena in many real-world applications such as collaborative robotics, supply chain analysis, social science, economics and ecology. As improvements in computational technologies combined with new modeling paradigms allow the simulation of ever more dynamic and complex systems, the generation of data from simulations of these systems can provide data to explore the phenomena of emergence.
To explore some of the modeling implications of systems where emergent phenomena tend to dominate, this research examines three simulations based on familiar natural systems where each is readily recognized as exhibiting emergent phenomena. To facilitate this exploration, a taxonomy of Emergent Behavior Systems (EBS) is developed and a modeling formalism consisting of an EBS lexicon and a formal specification for models of EBS is synthesized from the long history of theories and observations concerning emergence. This modeling formalism is applied to each of the systems and then each is simulated using an agent-based modeling framework.
To develop quantifiable measures, associations are asserted: 1) between agent-based models of EBS and graph-theoretical methods, 2) with respect to the formation of relationships between entities comprising a system and 3) concerning the change in uncertainty of organization as the system evolves.
These associations form the basis for three measurements related to the information flow, entity complexity, and spatial entropy of the simulated systems. These measurements are used to: 1) detect the existence of emergence and 2) differentiate amongst the three systems.
The results suggest that the taxonomy and formal specification developed provide a workable, simulation-centric definition of emergent behavior systems consistent with both historical concepts concerning the emergence phenomena and modern ideas in complexity science. Furthermore, the results support a structured approach to modeling these systems using agent-based methods and offers quantitative measures useful for characterizing the emergence phenomena in the simulations
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