DynaMOC: A Multiagent System for Coordination of Mobile Teams Based on Dynamic Overlapping Coalitions

Abstract

In this work, we focus on problems modeled as a set of activities to be scheduled and accomplished by mobile autonomous devices that communicate via a mobile ad hoc network. In such situations, the communication cost and computational efforts are key challenges. It is well known that keeping information about activities globally known by devices can provide better schedules. However, there are some contexts such as those where activities require startup based on location, whereby information restricted to neighborhood coalitions of devices can still produce satisfactory scheduling. The existing heuristics do not consider this approach. In this paper, we propose a multi-agent system that coordinates the dynamic formation of overlapping coalitions and the scheduling of activities within them. Heuristics for calculating the size of coalitions, as well as for scheduling activities, are proposed. The system is applied to solve the problem of area coverage in a simulated environment, whereby the results show that satisfactory schedules are obtained with lower cost of communication and computation in comparison with the solution based on globally known information.