Be Patient and Tolerate Imprecision: How Autonomous Agents can Coordinate Effectively

Abstract

A decentralized multiagent system comprises agents who act autonomously based on local knowledge. Achieving coo rdination in such a system is nontrivial, but is essential in most applications, where disjointed or in co herent behavior would be und es irabl e. Coordination in decentralized systems is a richer phenomenon than previously be li eved. In particular , five major att ribut es are crucial: the extent of the local knowledge and choices of the m em ber agents, the exte nt of their shared knowledge , the level of their inertia, and the level of precision of the required coordination. Int erestingly, precision and inertia turn out to co ntrol the coordination process. They define different regions within each of which th e other attributes re lat e nicely with coordination, but among which their relationships are altered or even reversed. Based on our study, we propose simp le design rules to obtain coordinated behavior in decentralized multiagent systems.