Publication - Coordinating Asynchronous Agent Activities in a Distributed Scheduling System

Authors: Chia, M.H.; Neiman, D.E.; and Lesser, V.R.
Title: Coordinating Asynchronous Agent Activities in a Distributed Scheduling System
Abstract: In this paper we investigate issues of agent coordination in a distributed job-shop scheduling system in which agents schedule potentially contentious activities asynchronously in parallel. Agents in such a system will in general have a limited view of the global state of resources and must exchange appropriate state information with other agents in order to schedule effectively. However, even given perfect instantaneous knowledge of other agents resource requirements, agents may still not be able schedule effectively if they do not also model the possible actions of other agents and the effects of their own actions. We describe two types of agent behaviors, poaching, and distraction, arising from the asynchronous nature of distributed systems that decrease scheduling effectiveness and present the results of experiments testing new coordination mechanisms for preventing such behaviors.
Keywords: Coordination, Multi-Agent Systems, Scheduling
Publisher: Proceedings of the Third International Conference on Multi-Agent Systems(ICMAS98)
Date: January 1998
Sources: PS: /Documents/Chia_TR97-066.ps
PDF: /Documents/Chia_TR97-066.pdf
Reference: Chia, M.H.; Neiman, D.E.; and Lesser, V.R.. Coordinating Asynchronous Agent Activities in a Distributed Scheduling System. January 1998.
bibtex: 
@article{Chia-95,
  author    = "M.H. Chia and D.E. Neiman and V.R. Lesser",
  title     = "{Coordinating Asynchronous Agent Activities in a
               Distributed Scheduling System}",
  publisher = "Proceedings of the Third International Conference on Multi-Agent Systems(ICMAS98)",
  month     = "January",
  year      = "1998",
  url       = "http://mas.cs.umass.edu/paper/95",
}