Cooperation of Multi-agent System and Its Composition

Cooperation is considered to be very important for an autonomous multiagent system (called MAS in short) composed of many autonomous agents. However, keeping a suitable combination of cooperation and diversity is considered to be more important for a MAS behaving in a dynamic environment. In this paper, as the examples of autonomous MAS, two species of fish schools with different cooperation and diversity are proposed for studying the relationship between the cooperation of MAS and its composition. A fish can be considered as an agent is because it can perceive the environment and measure the speeds and directions of other fish by using its sensors, such as eyes and lateral lines. It makes a decision by cooperating with the behavior of other fish and adapting to the environment change. A large number of simulations are carried out by using the two species of fish school models behaving in a water tank. Then the deadlock situations of different fish school models in the trap are compared and analyzed by using the simulations. Copyright c ©2005 IFAC