ECAI-2002 Conference Paper

[full paper]

MIP: A New Hybrid Multi-Agent Architecture for the Coordination of a Robot Colony Activities

Antonio Chella, Rosario Sorbello, Sabato Marco Siniscalchi, Salvatore Vitabile

In this paper the development and the implementation of one new robotic architecture for the coordination and the planning of a robot colonies in a dangerous and unknown environment are outlined. The name of this new architecture is Metaphor of Italian Politics (MIP Architecture). The structure of this architecture is dynamics. It takes inspiration from the political organizations of the democratic governments, where the leader isn't only one robot but it is constituted by a government of robots. In the MIP architecture the robots team is coordinated by a Prime Minister, a Minister of the Defence and a Minister of Communication while a second group of robots represents the robot citizens that are the executor of each mission. The model of the agents is hybrid, so every robot can assume every political position inside this dynamic structure. An intelligent procedure for the government regeneration has been developed in order to avoid the collapse of a mission. To validate the effectiveness of the our approach we have developed a framework based on the Mission Lab software developed at the Mobile Robot Lab of the Georgia Institute of Technology. The architecture was tested using as framework a bomb disposal expert robots team.

Keywords: AI architectures, Robotics, Multi-Agent Systems, Planning

Citation: Antonio Chella, Rosario Sorbello, Sabato Marco Siniscalchi, Salvatore Vitabile: MIP: A New Hybrid Multi-Agent Architecture for the Coordination of a Robot Colony Activities. In F. van Harmelen (ed.): ECAI2002, Proceedings of the 15th European Conference on Artificial Intelligence, IOS Press, Amsterdam, 2002, pp.713-717.