This chapter proposes the use of the type abstraction hierarchy (TAH) as a framework for deriving cooperative query answers (CQA). The TAH integrates abstraction with the subsumption (is-a) and composition (part-of) semantics found in the type hierarchy. This framework provides a multi-level object representation that is an important aspect of cooperative query answering. Patterns, which specif...

Stakeholder search is a general framework for an extension to the improving on the competition approach paradigm for cooperative search that allows for additional individual goals of the search agents. This framework defines a whole spectrum of possibilities for search systems. Based on a scheme defining interactions, search agents use a given strategy (ranging from cooperative to competitive) ...

This paper presents a mechanism enabling robot team members to share sensor information to achieve tightly-coupled cooperative tasks. This approach, called ASyMTRe, is based on a distributed extension of schema theory that allows schema-based building blocks to be interconnected in many ways, regardless of whether they are on the same or different robots. The inputs and outputs of schema are la...