The influence of memory in a threshold model for distributed task assignment

Harry Goldingay; Jort van Mourik

doi:10.1109/SASO.2008.37

The influence of memory in a threshold model for distributed task assignment

Research output: Chapter in Book/Published conference output › Chapter

Abstract

A nature inspired decentralised multi-agent algorithm is proposed to solve a problem of distributed task selection in which cities produce and store batches of different mail types. Agents must collect and process the mail batches, without a priori knowledge of the available mail at the cities or inter-agent communication. In order to process a different mail type than the previous one, agents must undergo a change-over during which it remains inactive. We propose a threshold based algorithm in order to maximise the overall efficiency (the average amount of mail collected). We show that memory, i.e. the possibility for agents to develop preferences for certain cities, not only leads to emergent cooperation between agents, but also to a significant increase in efficiency (above the theoretical upper limit for any memoryless algorithm), and we systematically investigate the influence of the various model parameters. Finally, we demonstrate the flexibility of the algorithm to changes in circumstances, and its excellent scalability.

Original language	English
Title of host publication	SASO '08: 2008 Second IEEE International Conference on Self-Adaptive and Self-Organizing Systems
Place of Publication	Washington (US)
Publisher	IEEE
Pages	117-126
Number of pages	10
ISBN (Print)	978-0-7695-3404-6
DOIs	https://doi.org/10.1109/SASO.2008.37
Publication status	Published - 20 Oct 2008

Bibliographical note

©2008 IEEE. Personal use of this material is permitted. However, permission to reprint/republish this material for advertising or promotional purposes or for creating new collective works for resale or redistribution to servers or lists, or to reuse any copyrighted component of this work in other works must be obtained from the IEEE

Keywords

distributed decision-making
memory
response thresholds
self organisation

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10.1109/SASO.2008.37

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©2008 IEEE. Personal use of this material is permitted. However, permission to reprint/republish this material for advertising or promotional purposes or for creating new collective works for resale or redistribution to servers or lists, or to reuse any copyrighted component of this work in other works must be obtained from the IEEE

http://doi.ieeecomputersociety.org/10.1109/SASO.2008.37

Cite this

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The influence of memory in a threshold model for distributed task assignment

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Keywords

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