Communication and propagation of action knowledge in multi-agent systems

Multi-agent systems (MASs) do play an important role in the construction of fault tolerant and robust robot systems. One major advantage of MAS is the fact that multiple agents work towards a common goal, having different ski lls for specific subtasks. Usually, agents have to use a common description of the actions to be carried out. Since agents can join and leave the MAS at any time, it is important that knowledge acquired by single agents can b e transferred or propagated between agents, to ensure that knowledge is not lost, in the case that an agent leaves the system. In this paper, techniqu es will be presented that enable representation of common extendable action knowledge for task solutions in an agent's knowledge base and additionally , algorithms for propagating this knowledge between agents efficiently and with minimum required communication effort. (C) 1999 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.