Coordinating Autonomous Agents Situated in Time-space

Mikhail Prokopenko
CSIRO Mathematical and Information Sciences

Tuesday 14 May at 11am

Abstract

In this talk we attempt to formally define various types of behaviour-based agent architectures and encapsulate them in a hierarchical setting. The developed framework (Deep Behaviour Projection) is capable of capturing some desirable properties of situated and tactical agents, such as robustness, real-time response and adaptive coordination. A new work on multi-agent coordination is also presented, including characterisations of some communication policies in terms of generic information-theoretic properties. In particular, the relative entropy of joint beliefs is suggested as an indicator of coordination potential of multi-agent systems. The Deep Behaviour Projection framework enables consistent reasoning about belief change, including beliefs about other agents - this allowed us to examine some of the identified communication policies empirically.

Most recently, the DBP framework has been used for design and development of FLOCK - FLexible Organiser of Content and Knowledge - a multi-agent system for adaptive e-mail categorisation.

Short resume

Mikhail Prokopenko is leading the multi-agent technology efforts in the Intelligent Interactive Technology group at CMIS Sydney. His long-term research goal is an effective integration of real-time perception, reasoning and action in autonomous agents, and better understanding of emergent behaviour in complex multi-agent systems. With his co-workers, Mikhail has developed a flexible multi-agent framework applicable to a number of application areas, as diverse as adaptive digital appliances and robotic soccer. Mikhail Prokopenko received his M.Sc.(Hon.) (1988) in Applied Mathematics from the Azerbaijan Institute of Petroleum and Chemistry (USSR), and M.A. (1994) in Economics from the University of Missouri - Columbia (USA). He recently completed his PhD thesis at the Computing Department of  Macquarie University, Sydney.

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