Product Distribution Theory and Semi-Coordinate Transformations

Product Distribution(PD) theory is a new framework for doing distributed, adaptive control of a multiagent system(MAS). We introduce the technique of “coordinate transformations” in PD theory gradient descent. These transformations selectively couple a few agents with each other into ”meta-agents”. Intuitively, this can be viewed as a generalization of forming binding contracts between those agents. Doing this sacrifices a bit of the distributed nature of the MAS, in that there must now be communication from multiple agents in determining what joint-move is finally implemented. However, as we demonstrate in computer experiments, these transformations improve the the performance of the MAS.