A behavior-based collaborative multi-agent system

Abstract

This paper presents a system architecture for behavior-based collaborative multi-agent systems in the discrete event setting following the Ramadge and Wonham framework. It addresses the issues of robustness to component failures, reliability of wireless communications, scalability to increase in the number of agents, and quantitative analysis of system performance at different levels of control hierarchy. The mission objectives are achieved by hierarchically structured supervisory control. The standard supervisory control theory is extended in the sense that the event alphabet is made a function of the plant parameters. The supervisory control system allows interactions with external agents including human operators. A proof-of-the-concept control architecture is experimentally validated by a wireless mobile robotic system consisting of three pioneer 2 AT mobile robots. This concept could be extended to other distributed systems provided that the continuous-varying dynamics of the underlying physical process is decoupled with the discrete state space of the supervisory control system.