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Negotiation Protocol with Learned Handover of Important Tasks for Planned Suspensions in Multi-agent Patrol Problems

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Agents and Artificial Intelligence (ICAART 2022)

Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science ((LNAI,volume 13786))

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Abstract

In this study, we propose a negotiation protocol for task handovers in the multi-agent cooperative patrol problem (MACPP) to alleviate temporary performance degradation due to planned suspension. In recent years, thanks to improvements in the performance of computers and the spread of technologies such as AI and IoT, systems with multiple agents such as autonomous robots or self-driving machines have been widely adopted to perform tasks on behalf of humans. To prevent sudden breakdowns, planned suspensions for periodic inspections and replacements are mandatory. However, if the agents stop without any prior action in the MACPP, performance rapidly worsens at least temporarily, which may be unacceptable in a number of applications. Meanwhile, in such a planned suspension, information on the agents to be suspended is given in advance, and the performance degradation can be reduced by using this information by transferring the important tasks to others in advance. The proposed novel negotiation method between agents is designed for this purpose based on the existing method for MACPP and can reduce the performance degradation caused by planned suspensions. A comparison with the conventional method shows that the proposed approach can mitigate performance degradation during planned suspension and transition periods.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    We assumed that a single timestep was approximately 4 s, the moving speed was approximately 0.25 m/s, while the maximum continuous operational time is 1 h. The charging time from the empty state was 3 h.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Computer Science and Communications Engineering, Waseda University, Shinjuku-ku, Tokyo, 169-8050, Japan

    Sota Tsuiki, Keisuke Yoneda & Toshiharu Sugawara

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  1. Sota Tsuiki
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  2. Keisuke Yoneda
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  3. Toshiharu Sugawara
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Correspondence to Sota Tsuiki .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. LIACC/FEUP, Porto, Portugal

    Ana Paula Rocha

  2. ICREA, Institute of Evolutionary Biology, Barcelona, Spain

    Luc Steels

  3. Leiden Institute of Advanced Computer Science, Leiden, The Netherlands

    Jaap van den Herik

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Tsuiki, S., Yoneda, K., Sugawara, T. (2022). Negotiation Protocol with Learned Handover of Important Tasks for Planned Suspensions in Multi-agent Patrol Problems. In: Rocha, A.P., Steels, L., van den Herik, J. (eds) Agents and Artificial Intelligence. ICAART 2022. Lecture Notes in Computer Science(), vol 13786. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-22953-4_2

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-22953-4_2

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  • Publisher Name: Springer, Cham

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-031-22952-7

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-031-22953-4

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