1 Fernando Rizzo, Pontifícia Universidade Católica do Rio de Janeiro, Department of Materials Science and Metallurgy, CP38008, Gávea, Rio de Janeiro, RJ, 22453-900, Brazil, [email protected] Abstract  The development of cooperative research networks requires the collaboration among partners with different visions about the timing and goals of a research project. In some cases, even competi...

Most previous theoretical work on motion planning for a group of robots has addressed the problem of path planning for the individual robots sequentially, in geometrically simple regions of Euclidean space (e.g., a planar region containing polygonal obstacles). In this paper, we define a version of the motionplanning problem in which the robots move simultaneously. We establish conditions under...

A freight forwarder may consolidate its goods transportations in order to achieve a more efficient operation. When goods transportations are consolidated, they may reduce operational costs, e.g. labor and fuel. This can be further improved if a number of freight forwarders cooperate and consolidate their collective goods transportations, i.e. it is a cooperation between competitors, a coopetiti...

In this paper, we propose a collision avoidance algorithm for multi-vehicle systems, which is a common problem in many areas, including navigation and robotics. In dynamic environments, vehicles may become involved in potential collisions with each other, particularly when the vehicle density is high and the direction of travel is unrestricted. Cooperatively planning vehicle movement can effect...

Cooperation between manufacturing enterprises has recently become widespread in order to cope with newly emerged challenges, such as growing customer expectations, increasing product variety and decreasing product lifecycles. Nowadays the response to these challenges seems to be the formation of tight relations in supply chains and networks, which enables joint handling of market risks and invo...

When two or more self-interested agents put their plans to execution in the same environment, conflicts may arise as a consequence, for instance, of a common utilization of resources. In this case, an agent can postpone the execution of a particular action, if this punctually solves the conflict, or it can resort to execute a different plan if the agent’s payoff significantly diminishes due to ...

At least three major subproblems can be distinguished in a multi-agent planning problem: a task allocation problem (which agent performs which subtasks), an individual planning problem for each of the agents involved (how to ensure that the tasks allocated to me can be performed), and a plan coordination problem (how to ensure that the individual planning processes can be integrated into an ove...

This paper describes an order planning system for dynamic supply-chains, addressing the requirements of a make-to-order business environment. A distributed and decentralised information system, based on an architecture of agents and extensively using the internet, was designed and implemented to provide new and more powerful decision support. The system aims at responding to the basic requireme...