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Transactions on Computational Collective Intelligence XIV pp 49–70Cite as

On Stigmergically Controlling a Population of Heterogeneous Mobile Agents Using Cloning Resource

Part of the Lecture Notes in Computer Science book series (TCCI,volume 8615)

Abstract

Cloning can greatly enhance the performance of networked systems that make use of mobile agents to patrol or service the nodes within. Uncontrolled cloning can however lead to generation of a large number of such agents which may affect the network performance adversely. Several attempts to control a population of homogeneous agents and their clones have been made. This paper describes an on-demand population control mechanism for a heterogeneous set of mobile agents along with an underlying application for their deployment as service providers in a networked robotic system. The mobile agents stigmergically sense and estimate the network conditions from within a node and control their own cloning rates. These agents also use a novel concept called the Cloning Resource which controls their cloning behaviour. The results, obtained from both simulation and emulation presented herein, portray the effectiveness of deploying this mechanism in both static and dynamic networks.

Keywords

  • Mobile agents
  • Cloning
  • Population control
  • Cloning resource
  • Typhon

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Acknowledgements

The authors wish to thank the Department of Science and Technology, Government of India, for the funding provided under the FIST scheme to set up the Robotics Lab. (www.iitg.ernet.in/cse/robotics) at the Department of Computer Science and Engineering, Indian Institute of Technology Guwahati, where the entire reported work was carried out.

The second author would like to acknowledge Tata Consultancy Services for their support under TCS-RSP.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Information and Communication Technology, ABV-Indian Institute of Information Technology and Management Gwalior, Gwalior, M.P., India

    W. Wilfred Godfrey

  2. Department of Computer Science and Engineering, Indian Institute of Technology Guwahati, Guwahati, Assam, India

    Shashi Shekhar Jha & Shivashankar B. Nair

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  1. W. Wilfred Godfrey
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  2. Shashi Shekhar Jha
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  3. Shivashankar B. Nair
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Shashi Shekhar Jha .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Institute of Informatics, Wroclaw University of Technology, Wroclaw, Poland

    Ngoc Thanh Nguyen

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Godfrey, W.W., Jha, S.S., Nair, S.B. (2014). On Stigmergically Controlling a Population of Heterogeneous Mobile Agents Using Cloning Resource. In: Nguyen, N. (eds) Transactions on Computational Collective Intelligence XIV. Lecture Notes in Computer Science(), vol 8615. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-662-44509-9_3

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