2,059 research outputs found
An overview of artificial intelligence and robotics. Volume 1: Artificial intelligence. Part B: Applications
Artificial Intelligence (AI) is an emerging technology that has recently attracted considerable attention. Many applications are now under development. This report, Part B of a three part report on AI, presents overviews of the key application areas: Expert Systems, Computer Vision, Natural Language Processing, Speech Interfaces, and Problem Solving and Planning. The basic approaches to such systems, the state-of-the-art, existing systems and future trends and expectations are covered
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
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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 agentâs architecture in real time
The design and implementation of a multi-agent architecture to increase coordination efficiency in multi-AUV operations
This research addresses the problem of coordinating multiple autonomous underwater
vehicle (AUV) operations. An intelligent mission executive has been created that uses
multi-agent technology to control and coordinate multiple AUVs in communication
deficient environments. By incorporating real time vehicle prediction, blackboardbased
hierarchical mission plans and mission optimisation in conjunction with a simple
broadcast communication system this system aims to handle the limitations inherent in
underwater operations and intelligently control multiple vehicles. In this research
efficiency is evaluated and then compared to the current state of the art in multiple AUV
control. The research is then validated in real AUV coordination trials.
Results will show that compared to the state of the art the control system developed and
implemented in this research coordinates multiple vehicles more efficiently and is able
to function in a range of poor communication environments. These findings are
supported by in water validation trials with heterogeneous AUVs.
This thesis will first present an in depth state of the art of the related research topics
including multi-agent systems, collaborative robotics and autonomous underwater
vehicles. The development and functionality of this research will then be explained
followed by a detailed description of the experiments. Results are then presented both
for the simulated and real world trials followed by a discussion of the findings
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