On Transfer from Multiagent to Multi-Robot Systems

Our research involves application of methods well-studied in virtual multiagent systems (MAS) but less well-understood in physical multi-robot systems (MRS). This paper investigates the relationship between performance results collected in parallel simulated (multiagent) and physical (multi-robot) environments. Our hypothesis is that some performance metrics established in simulation will predict results in the physical environment. Experiments show that some performance metrics can predict actual values, because data collected in both simulated and physical settings fall within the same numeric range. Other performance metrics predict relative values, because patterns found in data collected in the simulated setting are similar to patterns found in the physical setting. The long term aim is to establish a reliability profile for comparing different types of performance metrics in simulated versus physical environments. The work presented here demonstrates a first step, in which experiments were conducted and assessed within one parallel simulatedphysical setup.