Examining Some Assumptions of the FA C Distributed Problem Solving Paradigm

The functionally accurate cooperative FA C distributed problem solving paradigm has been an impor tant approach for organizing distributed problem solving among homogeneous cooperating agents They idea behind the FA C approach is that agents can produce tentative partial results based on only local information and then exploit the constraints that exist among these local results to resolve uncertainties and global inconsistencies that result from the use of incomplete information While this approach has been used in several implemented systems there has been little formal analysis of the quality of the solutions that are produced by the approach or of the conditions that are necessary for the approach to be successful This paper builds on work we have done to begin to formally analyze the quality of solutions that can be produced by FA C systems by examining some of the assumptions implicit in the approach The analysis will be done in the context of distributed sensor interpretation