Proactive Communication in Multi-agent Teamwork

Proactive Communication in Multi-Agent Teamwork. (December 2005)Yu Zhang, B.S.; M.S., Central South University, ChinaChair of Advisory Committee: Dr. Richard A. Volz Sharing common goals and acting cooperatively are critical issues in multi-agent teamwork. Traditionally, agents cooperate with each other by inferring others'actions implicitly or explicitly, based on established norms for behavior or onknowledge about the preferences or interests of others. This kind of cooperation eitherrequires that agents share a large amount of knowledge about the teamwork, which isunrealistic in a distributed team, or requires high-frequency message exchange, whichweakens teamwork efficiency, especially for a team that may involve human members.In this research, we designed and developed a new approach called ProactiveCommunication, which helps to produce realistic behavior and interactions for multi-agent teamwork. We emphasize that multi-agent teamwork is governed by the sameprinciples that underlie human cooperation. Psychological studies of human teamworkhave shown that members of an effective team often anticipate the needs of othermembers and choose to assist them proactively. Human team members are alsonaturally capable of observing the environment and others so they can establish certainparameters for performing actions without communicating with others. ProactiveCommunication endows agents with observabilities and enables agents use them totrack others’ mental states. Additionally, Proactive Communication uses statistical