Defining Plan Metrics for Multi-agent Planning within Mechatronic Systems

The paradigm of self-optimization introduces flexible systems of objectives to the area of mechatronics. From this flexiblity new coordination problems arise. Such a problem is the coordination of function modules in such a way that the overall system of objectives is met as good as possible. Multi-agent planning offers mechanisms to provide this coordination. In this paper we introduce the application of an established method from the area of decision analysis (value tree anaylsis) to define a common and coherent system of plan metrics for the multi-agent based coordination of function modules. The application of this approach is demonstrated on example of function modules within a railway vehicle.