Next: Introduction
Handling Unanticipated Events During Collaboration
Roy M. Turner
Peggy S. Eaton
Department of Computer Science
University of New Hampshire
Durham, New Hampshire 03824
rmt@unh.edu
pse@umcs.maine.edu
Abstract:
Handling unanticipated events during problem solving is difficult enough
when an agent is operating by itself. When the agent is part of a
cooperative distributed problem solving (CDPS) system, the task's difficulty
increases dramatically. Now the agent is forced to consider the effect of
the event not only on itself, but also on others and the group as a whole.
It must also consider who should handle the event and the likely impact that
actions taken to diagnose the event or respond to it may have on other
agents. In this paper, we discuss preliminary work aimed at developing a
process for handling events during multiagent cooperative problem solving.
The domain in which the work is being done is cooperating multiple
autonomous underwater vehicles (AUVs). However, the approach should have
broader applicability to almost any real-world cooperative problem solving
task involving autonomous or nearly autonomous agents.