Abstract
We address tactical behaviors of unmanned ground vehicles (UGVs) and focus on their coordination within hierarchical units. This research thus addresses multiagent systems but more particularly structures where autonomous parts coordinate to form wholes that in turn are parts in more inclusive wholes. To capture these notions, we introduce the concept of a holarchy (a hierarchy of holons, which are both parts and wholes) and use an enhancement of the Statechart notation called Parts/whole Statecharts. We relate aspects of this notation to the technical notion of common knowledge, which is a necessary condition for coordination, and we sketch techniques for building holarchic models using Parts/whole Statecharts. An implementation of one such model in Matlab’s Stateflow tool is sketched.
This work is supported by General Dynamics Robotics System, grant “Learning and Adaptation for Tactical Behavior”. Guidance from Mr. D. Rogers of General Dynamics is gratefully acknowledged.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Preview
Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.
References
U.S.Army: Field Manual 3-19. Headquarters, Department of the Army, Washington, D.C (1993)
Huhns, M., Stephens, L.: Multiagent Systems and Societies of Agents. In: Multiagent Systems: A Modern Approach to Distributed Artificial Intelligence, pp. 79–120. MIT Press, Cambridge (2000)
Wooldridge, M.: Intelligent Agents. In: Multiagent Systems: A Modern Approach to Distributed Artificial Intelligence, pp. 27–78. MIT press, Cambridge (2000)
Simon, H.A.: The architecture of complexity: Hierarchic systems. Proc. of the American Philosophical Soc. 106, 467–482 (1962)
Koestler, A.: The Ghost in the Machine. Macmillan, New York (1968)
Fischer, K., Schillo, M., Siekmann, J.: Holonic multiagent systems: The foundation for the organization of multiagent systems. In: Mařík, V., McFarlane, D.C., Valckenaers, P. (eds.) HoloMAS 2003. LNCS (LNAI), vol. 2744, pp. 71–80. Springer, Heidelberg (2003)
Giret, A.: A multi agent methodology for holonic manufacturing systems. In: AAMAS 2005: Proceedings of the 4th International Joint Conference on Autonomous Agents and Multiagent Systems, pp. 1375–1375. ACM Press, New York (2005)
Albus, J.: 4D/RCS: A reference model architecture for unmanned vehicle systems. In: Proceedings of the SPIE 16th Annual International Symposium on Aerospace/Defense Sensing, Simulation and Controls, NIST, Orlando, FL (2002)
Harel, D.: Statecharts: A visual formalism for complex systems. Science of Computer Programming 8, 231–274 (1987)
Pazzi, L.: Implicit versus explicit characterization of complex entities and events. Data and Knowledge Eng. 31, 115–134 (1999)
Fagin, R., Halpern, J.Y., Vardi, Y.M.: Reasoning About Knowledge. MIT Press, Cambridge (2003)
Clark, H.: Using Language. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge (1996)
Clark, H., Carlson, T.: Speech Acts and Hearers’ Beliefs. In: Mutual Knowledge, pp. 1–36. Academic Press, London (1982)
Barwise, J.: The Situation in Logic. CLSI Publications, Stanford (1989)
Uselton, A.C., Smolka, S.A.: A process algebraic semantics for statecharts via state refinement. In: PROCOMET, pp. 267–286 (1994)
Weinberg, G.M.: An Introduction to General Systems Thinking, 1st edn. Dorset House Publishing Company, Inc. (2001)
Pingree, P.J., Mikk, E.: The HiVy tool set. In: Alur, R., Peled, D.A. (eds.) CAV 2004. LNCS, vol. 3114, pp. 466–469. Springer, Heidelberg (2004)
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2006 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg
About this paper
Cite this paper
Esterline, A., BouSaba, C., Pioro, B., Homaifar, A. (2006). Hierarchies, Holons, and Agent Coordination. In: Hinchey, M.G., Rago, P., Rash, J.L., Rouff, C.A., Sterritt, R., Truszkowski, W. (eds) Innovative Concepts for Autonomic and Agent-Based Systems. WRAC 2005. Lecture Notes in Computer Science(), vol 3825. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/11964995_19
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/11964995_19
Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg
Print ISBN: 978-3-540-69265-2
Online ISBN: 978-3-540-69266-9
eBook Packages: Computer ScienceComputer Science (R0)