Multi – Agent System Concepts Theory and Application Phases
چکیده
This chapter presents a recent research studies in multi-agent system, which has been using in many areas to improve performance and quality as well as reduce cost and save time by using available agents to solve many problems. Pursuit problem will be discussed to demonstrate the cooperation of multi agent systems as multi agent robots. Different pursuit algorithms are implemented for acquiring a dynamic target in unknown environment. The multi-agent system concepts appeared recently and it is extremely distributed in all research areas; to solve problems by many agents cooperation. These agents, which have been using for multi-agent system, are defined as an entity; software routine, robot, sensor, process or person, which performs actions, works and makes decision (Arenas & Sanabria, 2003). In human society’s concepts, the cooperation means “an intricate and subtle activity, which has defied many attempts to formalize it” (D’Inverno et al., 1997). Artificial and real social activity in social systems is the paradigm examples of Cooperation. In multi-agent concepts side, there are many definitions for cooperation; the most popular definitions are Definition 1: “The multi-agents working together for doing something that creates a progressive result such increasing performance or saving time” (Gustasfon & Matson, 2003). Definition 2: “One agent adopts the goal of another agent. Its hypothesis is that the two agents have been designed in advance and, there is no conflict goal between them, furthermore, one agent only adopts another agent’s aim passively.” Definition 3: “One autonomous agent adopts another autonomous agent’s goal. Its hypothesis is that cooperation only occurs between the agents, which have the ability of rejecting or accepting the cooperation” (Changhong et al., 2002). The multi-agents system is divided to theory and application phases (Changhong et al., 2002). Cooperation taxonomy, cooperation structure, cooperation forming procedure and others are related to theory phase. For application phases, the mobile agent cooperation, information gathering, sensor information and communication and others have been studied. The following sections will show the latest researches of multi-agent system from both theory and application phases.