Solving inaccessibility in multi-agent systems by mobile middle-agents

Article type: Research Article

Authors: Šišlák, David^{; *} | Pěchouček, Michal | Rehák, Martin | Tožička, Jan | Benda, Petr

Affiliations: Department of Cybernetics, Czech Technical University in Prague, Technická 2, Prague 6, 166 27 Czech Republic

Correspondence: [*] Corresponding author. E-mail: sislakd@feld.cvut.cz

Abstract: This paper analyzes the problem of communication inaccessibility in the multi-agent systems. Apart from listing the main reasons for existence of communication inaccessibility, it suggest a complete inaccessibility model and metrics. Various inaccessibility solutions are presented, together with their applicability in the environments with different degrees of inaccessibility, as verified by experiments. Major contribution of this paper is in suggesting a novel solution to solving inaccessibility based on community of autonomous, migrating middle-agents. A distributed algorithm for dynamic allocation of the middle-agents in a network of partially inaccessible agents is proposed. The suggested solution is supported by a set of experiments comparing the distributed and centralized algorithm for middle-agents allocation.

Keywords: Multi-agent system, ad-hoc network, inaccessibility, middle-agents

DOI: 10.3233/MGS-2005-1202

Journal: Multiagent and Grid Systems, vol. 1, no. 2, pp. 73-87, 2005