Agent-based management of support systems for distributed brainstorming

In this paper, we describe the design and the management of an agent-based system that supports distributed brainstorming activities. The support system is a highly coordinated IoT application composed of many locally installed interface devices, multimedia communication functions, and cloud functions that process application logic and store meeting data. The system is designed to support a variety of brainstorming sessions, so its functionalities must be modifiable and enable the system to be adapted to different environments and user requirements without any loss of performance. System accessibility should be also ensured from any location for any user. These constraints require a flexible and usable support system.We further discuss the aspects of flexibility and usability that are important in a support system for distributed brainstorming, from which we propose a conceptual schema for flexible and usable support systems. To realize this schema, we present a resource-oriented architecture that can modify the brainstorming support system’s structure and functions. Flexibility is achieved thanks to an agent-based system that manages resources and operates on them according to users’ requests.We also describe the system architecture, which is organized around a set of channels dedicated to different services proposed to the users. We present in detail a video channel that ensures user awareness during synchronized activities. We then conduct several experiments verifying the usability of important channels in the architecture and present the results of these experiments.Finally, we discuss experimental scenarios that show how the system owes its adaptability to management based on an agent organization that supports distributed brainstorming and other activities.     

Model checking temporal knowledge and commitments in multi-agent systems using reduction

Though modeling and verifying Multi-Agent Systems (MASs) have long been under study, there are still challenges when many different aspects need to be considered simultaneously. In fact, various frameworks have been carried out for modeling and verifying MASs with respect to knowledge and social commitments independently. However, considering them under the same framework still needs further investigation, particularly from the verification perspective. In this article, we present a new technique for model checking the logic of knowledge and commitments (CTLKC⁺). The proposed technique is fully-automatic and reduction-based in which we transform the problem of model checking CTLKC⁺ into the problem of model checking an existing logic of action called ARCTL. Concretely, we construct a set of transformation rules to formally reduce the CTLKC⁺ model into an ARCTL model and CTLKC⁺ formulae into ARCTL formulae to get benefit from the extended version of NuSMV symbolic model checker of ARCTL. Compared to a recent approach that reduces the problem of model checking CTLKC⁺ to another logic of action called GCTL¹, our technique has better scalability and efficiency. We also analyze the complexity of the proposed model checking technique. The results of this analysis reveal that the complexity of our reduction-based procedure is PSPACE-complete for local concurrent programs with respect to the size of these programs and the length of the formula being checked. From the time perspective, we prove that the complexity of the proposed approach is P-complete with regard to the size of the model and length of the formula, which makes it efficient. Finally, we implement our model checking approach on top of extended NuSMV and report verification results for the verification of the NetBill protocol, taken from business domain, against some desirable properties. The obtained results show the effectiveness of our model checking approach when the system scales up.     

Real-time administration of tool sharing and best matching to enhance assembly lines balanceability and flexibility

Collaboration has been found in previous studies on the design of assembly lines to be a useful mechanism. In this study, the focus is on a collaborative assembly (CA) framework, inspired by the design principles of CCT, the Collaborative Control Theory, to improve balanceability and flexibility of assembly lines through tool sharing (TS) among idle and bottleneck workstations. TS is widely practiced in advanced assembly facilities to reduce cost and improve consistency and standardization in assembly and in assembly-and-test utilities, relying often on real time control. The framework developed here addresses the systems design aspect of Mechatronics, covering the planning, execution, and control mechanisms. Planning includes assembly line balancing (ALB) and initial TS decisions, made continually by solving a bi-objective mixed-integer program (BOMIP). A collaborative multi-agent system (CMAS) enhanced with a TS-best matching (BM) protocol is developed to execute the plan, control the process, and modify the TS decisions, considering dynamic changes in the system’s operations. Experiments show that the new CA framework significantly outperforms classic approaches (i.e., ALB without TS-BM) in terms of cycle time, utilization of tools, and balanceability. In addition, the control mechanism is proven to augment the line’s flexibility against the inherent uncertainties of assembly processes, compared to the previously developed static CA frameworks.     

Finite-time consensus of Markov jumping multi-agent systems with time-varying actuator faults and input saturation

This paper gives attention to the issue of finite-time leader-following consensus of nonlinear discrete-time multi-agent systems with Markov jump parameters. A robust fault-tolerant control protocol that takes the effect of time-varying actuator faults and actuator saturation into account is considered for the addressed system. The main purpose of the paper is to design a fault-tolerant controller such that the leader-following consensus of the addressed system is achieved over a prescribed finite-time interval. By using the Lyapunov functional approach, Abel’s lemma and some properties of Kronecker product, a sufficient condition for the existence of fault-tolerant state feedback controller for the addressed system is presented and an explicit parameterization of such a controller is obtained. Eventually, a numerical example along with its simulation results is exploited to reflect the applicability of the proposed design method, wherein the robust performance of controller is exhibited despite the presence of actuator saturation and time-varying actuator faults.     

基于多代理人模拟的上海市域零售业中心体系研究

在上海市域人口向郊区疏解的背景下,零售业空间随之重构。应用基于多代理人模拟技术的零售业空间结构模拟系统,模拟消费者与商业中心之间的互动,并呈现商业中心体系的空间布局,为市域商业体系规划提供新的方法和思路。对2000年上海市域零售业中心体系进行实证,检验了模拟系统对实际、大规模零售业中心体系的解释和再现能力,获得关键模型参数。在此基础上,推演上海未来可能情景下的零售业中心体系。发现市级中心以及地区级中心发展的重点分别位于中心城区和郊区,北外滩、世纪大道具有成为顶级市级中心的潜力,有考虑网购影响的必要性。     

Cooperative preview tracking problem of discrete-time linear multi-agent systems: A distributed output regulation approach

We are concerned with the cooperative preview tracking problem of discrete-time linear multi-agent systems under the fixed directed acyclic communication topology. First, by introducing a preview-information-based auxiliary system and a type of distributed internal model, we establish an augmented system for each follower and formulate the cooperative preview tracking problem as a distributed output regulation (DOR) problem. Then, from the solvability of the DOR problem and the stabilizability of the augmented system, we present the sufficient conditions that guarantee the achievement of the cooperative tracking consensus. With this procedure, we finally propose a distributed dynamic feedback control law for the original problem with virtual regulated output integral and preview feedforward compensation.     

Distributed estimation and control for mobile sensor networks with coupling delays

This paper deals with the issue of distributed estimation and control for mobile sensor networks with coupling delays. Based on the Kalman-Consensus filter and the flocking algorithm, all mobile sensors move to a target to increase the quality of gathered data, and achieve consensus on the estimation values of the target in the presence of time-delay and noises. By applying an effective cascading Lyapunov method and matrix theory, stability analysis is carried out. Furthermore, a necessary condition for the convergence is presented via the boundary conditions of feedback coefficients. Some numerical examples are provided to validate the effectiveness of theoretical results.     

Distributed self-tuning consensus and synchronization

The problem of self-tuning of coupling parameters in multi-agent systems is considered. Agent dynamics are described by a discrete-time double integrator with unknown input gain. Each agent locally tunes the strength of interaction with neighboring agents by using a normalized gradient algorithm (NGA). The tuning algorithm minimizes the square of the error between an individual agent’s state (velocity) and the one step delayed average of its own state and the states of its neighbors. Assuming that the network graph is strongly connected, it is proved that the sequence of coupling parameters is convergent and all velocities converge toward the same constant value.     

Leader-following consensus for a class of second-order nonlinear multi-agent systems

This paper deals with the leader-following consensus problem for a class of multi-agent systems with nonlinear dynamics and directed communication topology. The control input of the leader agent is assumed to be unknown to all follower agents. A distributed adaptive nonlinear control law is constructed using the relative state information between neighboring agents, which achieves leader-following consensus for any directed communication graph that contains a spanning tree with the root node being the leader agent. Compared with previous results, the nonlinear functions are not required to satisfy the globally Lipschitz or Lipschitz-like condition and the adaptive consensus protocol is in a distributed fashion. A numerical example is given to verify our proposed protocol.