Robot teams, human workgroups and animal sociobiology: a review of research on natural and artificial multi-agent autonomous systems

Abstract

This paper presents a review of research in the field of distributed intelligent agents, including both natural systems (humans and animals) and artificial systems (multi-robot systems and software multiagent systems). Research in these areas has been carried out under the headings of human workgroups, animal sociobiology, and multi-robot systems and multi-agent systems. In addition to a detailed review of artificial systems research, it is the intent of this paper to familiarize the reader with related works in natural systems. This could result in more biologically inspired designs in the future. This paper also includes a list of biologically inspired heuristics with the associated sources (references) that could be of use in the design and analysis of robot teams and multi-agent systems.