Publication - Communication Management Using Abstraction in Distributed Bayesian Networks

Authors: Shen, Jiaying; and Lesser, Victor
Title: Communication Management Using Abstraction in Distributed Bayesian Networks
Abstract: Techniques were developed in previous work for managing communication in a controlled satisficing manner in two layer distributed Bayesian Networks. DEC-MDPs were used to sequence the information transferred in order to guarantee the required confidence level. In this paper, we investigate the transmission of more abstract information to further reduce the communication cost in the system, which also has the additional benefit of reducing the size of the DEC-MDP generated. We show how we can automatically generate an appropriate abstraction level. This work provides us with a formal view of the use of abstraction in agent cooperation and begins to give us an understanding of when the less abstract data needs to be transmitted.
Keywords: Communication, Coordination, Distributed Bayesian Network, Distributed MDP, Distributed Problem Solving, Multi-Agent Systems, Resource Bounded, Uncertainty
Publication: Proceedings of the Fourth International Joint Conference on Autonomous Agents and Multi Agent Systems (AAMAS 05), pp. 1115 - 1116
Location: The Netherlands
Publisher: New York: ACM Press
Date: July 2005
Sources: PDF: http://mas.cs.umass.edu/~jyshen/papers/p367-shen.pdf
Notes: (Extended Abstract; Presented as Poster.)
Reference: Shen, Jiaying; and Lesser, Victor. Communication Management Using Abstraction in Distributed Bayesian Networks. Proceedings of the Fourth International Joint Conference on Autonomous Agents and Multi Agent Systems (AAMAS 05), New York: ACM Press, pp. 1115-1116. July 2005. (Extended Abstract; Presented as Poster.)
bibtex: 
@inproceedings{Shen-389,
  author    = "Jiaying Shen and Victor Lesser",
  title     = "{Communication Management Using Abstraction in
               Distributed Bayesian Networks}",
  booktitle = "Proceedings of the Fourth International Joint
               Conference on Autonomous Agents and Multi Agent
               Systems (AAMAS 05)",
  publisher = "New York: ACM Press",
  pages     = "1115-1116",
  month     = "July",
  year      = "2005",
  address   = "The Netherlands",
  url       = "http://mas.cs.umass.edu/paper/389",
}