Agent Coordination Mechanism s in the COMBI NED System s First Aid - - PowerPoint PPT Presentation

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Agent Coordination Mechanism s in the COMBI NED System s First Aid - - PowerPoint PPT Presentation

COMBI NED System s Agent Coordination Mechanism s in the COMBI NED System s First Aid Case Patrick Storm s Yall W aalw ijk, The Netherlands AgentLink- I I I - TF3 Budapest, Hungary Septem ber 2 0 0 5 16 September


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COMBI NED System s

16 September 2005 AgentLink-I II Technical Forum 3 - Budapest, Hungary 1

Agent Coordination Mechanism s in the COMBI NED System s First Aid Case

Patrick Storm s • Y’all • W aalw ijk, The Netherlands AgentLink- I I I - TF3 • Budapest, Hungary • Septem ber 2 0 0 5

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16 September 2005 AgentLink-I II Technical Forum 3 - Budapest, Hungary 2

COMBI NED System s

Com bined System s ( 1 )

  • Chaotic Open world Multi-agent Based

I ntelligently NEtworked Decision support System s

  • Large scale decision support systems in chaotic and

complex environments

  • Early and improved situation awareness, decision

making and action selection

  • Self-managing mechanisms and agent based techniques
  • And more…
  • Demonstrator: crisis scenario in the Rotterdam

Harbour

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16 September 2005 AgentLink-I II Technical Forum 3 - Budapest, Hungary 3

COMBI NED System s

Com bined System s ( 2 )

  • October 2002 – October 2006
  • Decis Lab, Delft:
  • University of Amsterdam
  • Technical University Delft
  • TNO (contract research for companies, government

bodies and public organizations)

  • Thales (multinational in defense, and communication

systems)

  • Dutch SME subcontractors: Acklin, Y’All, Inology
  • See http: / / combined.decis.nl
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16 September 2005 AgentLink-I II Technical Forum 3 - Budapest, Hungary 4

COMBI NED System s

Case ( part of Harbour Scenario)

  • Case: casualties in the Rotterdam Harbour
  • People get sick after inhaling toxic gases
  • People get hurt when crowd panics
  • Jobs
  • Localize casualties
  • Prioritize (Triage)
  • Give medical attention
  • Evacuate
  • Work needs to be allocated to emergency

personnel, e.g. medics

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16 September 2005 AgentLink-I II Technical Forum 3 - Budapest, Hungary 5

COMBI NED System s

Assum ptions

  • Medics and casualties can communicate via PDAs
  • Cell phones (GSM/ SMS, WAP, GPRS, UMTS)
  • Organizers (WiFi)
  • Active Triage Cards (RFID)
  • Each medic and casualty is represented by a software agent
  • Agent executes on PDA
  • Agent interacts with other agents on PDAs
  • Network of agents that negotiate on medic-casualty

assignment

  • Benefits:
  • Medics are relieved from planning tasks
  • Casualties are sooner taken care of
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16 September 2005 AgentLink-I II Technical Forum 3 - Budapest, Hungary 6

COMBI NED System s

First Aid Problem Definition

medic casualty (color = triage level) limited communication range medics can move around and enter / leave scene casualties remain in one place condition of casualty gets worse in time when medic treats casualty, condition stabilizes (min. treatment time) 1:1 medic-casualty assignment

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16 September 2005 AgentLink-I II Technical Forum 3 - Budapest, Hungary 7

COMBI NED System s

Testbed ( Logical Architecture)

Scenario Generator Scenario Player Agent Environment Evaluation Environment ACM SMDS

(Weak SelfOrg)

ACM Agent Organizations ACM Ant-Based

(Strong SelfOrg)

Event Scripts Create / Destroy Agent Instances Logdata for Performance Indicators Agent Coordination Instructions

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16 September 2005 AgentLink-I II Technical Forum 3 - Budapest, Hungary 8

COMBI NED System s

( 1 ) SMDS Approach

  • Self Managing Distributed Systems
  • Knowledge base system (KBS) for system resources,

with formal descriptions of capabilities, dependencies and constraints

  • Plan for execution is inferred from KBS, based on a goal
  • r information need
  • Plan is executed and monitored
  • Implementation: COMPASS (Thales)
  • Continuously searching for an overall optimum
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16 September 2005 AgentLink-I II Technical Forum 3 - Budapest, Hungary 9

COMBI NED System s

  • Agents act using “social rules”, e.g.
  • Medics will ask for work when entering scene
  • Medics will handover jobs when leaving scene
  • Severe casualties have higher priority
  • Make 1-to-1 deals with other medics
  • Organizational principle
  • Determine work (strategy)
  • Divide work (strategy)
  • Coordinate work (management)
  • Perform work (operation)
  • Coordination approaches, inspired by human
  • rganizations (Mintzberg)

( 2 ) Organizational Approach

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16 September 2005 AgentLink-I II Technical Forum 3 - Budapest, Hungary 10

COMBI NED System s

( 3 ) Ant-based Approach

  • Ant-Based (similar to routing application)
  • No a priori assumptions on coordination
  • Agents interact through their environment (indirect)
  • Agents act according to simple behavioral rules
  • Coordination emerges
  • Vehicle Routing with Time Windows
  • Medic Agents individually plan their task
  • Node = casualty
  • Time Window = time to next triage level
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COMBI NED System s

Current Challenges

  • Define overall performance indicators
  • Functional
  • “When are the agents doing a good job?”
  • Utility function
  • Non-functional
  • Response to sudden disruptions in environment
  • Predictability: do we get similar results over and over
  • Communication load, CPU load
  • Model MARA problem for Organizational approach
  • What are the resources?
  • Who negotiates?
  • How to value resources?
  • etc.
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16 September 2005 AgentLink-I II Technical Forum 3 - Budapest, Hungary 12

COMBI NED System s

Functional Perform ance I ndicator

  • “When are the agents doing a good job?”
  • Primary: penalty for transitions between triage levels, e.g.
  • After 25 minutes Green Yellow: penalty = 1
  • After 15 minutes Yellow Red: penalty = 5
  • After 10 minutes Red Black: penalty = 25
  • Performance indicator = (sum of penalties) / (max penalty)
  • Discussion: penalty is arbitrary what is a sensible choice?
  • Secondary: minimize medic idle time
  • Medic is not idle when treating casualty
  • Medic is idle when in transit, or doing nothing
  • Performance indicator = (sum idle time) / (total time)
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COMBI NED System s

Agent Organization Approach

  • Casualties are tasks (= treatment)
  • discrete, indivisible, non-sharable
  • perishable & dynamic
  • multi-unit
  • Medics negotiate on tasks
  • Medic is allocated a “job list” of treatment tasks
  • Simple 1-to-1 deals
  • Medic is “happy” with his job list when:
  • All tasks on job list can be handled in time…

. with minimal penalty

and minimal idle time

  • How to handle the dynamics in negotiation?
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COMBI NED System s

End Thank you for your attention

Contact: Patrick Storms Y’All B.V. Grotestraat 182, NL-5141HD Waalwijk, The Netherlands patrick@yall.nl