Links

Goals

The goal of this reading group is to survey literature on multi-robotic and multi-agent systems in hopes of better understanding the problems in each research group. In particular, we will address the following topics:

  • Market based systems (Traderbots, Hoplites, MURDOCH, etc.)
  • Team theories (BDI, Joint Intentions, and SharedPlans)
  • Biologically inspired/emergent behavior systems
  • Decision theoretic approaches to coordination (various flavors of MDPs)
  • Human interaction with multirobot systems
  • Challenge problems in the multirobot field (robot soccer, SDR, USAR) and associated solutions (regret minimization, shared potential fields)
We are a group of roboticists trying to understand agent methods and agents researchers trying to understand robot problems. In cases where there is nobody in our group comfortable with leading a discussion on a certain topic, we will invite outside researchers to present. Some problems we will work on answering are:
  • What are the pros and cons of each approach for multirobot coordination?
  • Why do MAS people sneer at MRTA people?
  • Why don't MAS work on real robots?
  • How do decision theoretic approaches fit in?

Logistics

Over the summer, we will be meeting every other week. Please check out this webpage regularly for information or subscribe to the mailing list.

Our mailing list for announcements and technical discussions is:



If you are not on the list and would like to be added, please email Mary Koes.

All individuals are welcome to attend our discussions. Please read the relevant paper before the meeting so that the discussions remain fruitful.

Presenters

PRESENTERS NEEDED!!! Interested in presenting your work or a paper you find interesting? Please email Mary Koes to schedule a time.

Presenters, please let people know what papers you will be discussing (either by emailing Mary or emailing the list directly) by Friday before you present. After presenting, please create a notes page with the BibTeX for your papers, a brief overview of the paper, criticisms and strengths of the paper, open research problems in the paper, and any important ideas discussed during the meeting.
Thanks!

Schedule

Week

Date

Discussion Leader

Topic

Room

Readings

Notes

1

June 21, 2006 M. Koes COBOS 1pm
NSH 1505
Fua05 notes

2

July 19, 2006 L. Hiatt ASyMTRe 1pm
NSH 2507
Tang05
Tang06

3

August 3, 2006 G. Sukthankar Failure detection in multi-robot coordination 1pm
NSH 2507
Kalech06
Kaminka01

Bibtex


@inproceedings{maheswaran05,
author = {Rajiv T. Maheswaran and Jonathan P. Pearce and Pradeep Varakantham and Emma Bowring and Milind Tambe},
title = {Valuations of Possible States (VPS): a quantitative framework for analysis of privacy loss among collaborative personal assistant agents},
booktitle = {AAMAS '05: Proceedings of the fourth international joint conference on Autonomous agents and multiagent systems},
year = {2005},
pages = {1030--1037},
location = {The Netherlands},
publisher = {ACM Press},
address = {New York, NY, USA},
}

@inproceedings{otterloo05,
author = {Sieuwert van Otterloo},
title = {The value of privacy: optimal strategies for privacy minded agents},
booktitle = {AAMAS '05: Proceedings of the fourth international joint conference on Autonomous agents and multiagent systems},
year = {2005},
pages = {1015--1022},
location = {The Netherlands},
publisher = {ACM Press},
address = {New York, NY, USA},
}

@InProceedings{ Howard04 ,
author = {Andrew Howard},
title = {Multi-Robot Mapping using Manifold Representations},
booktitle = {Proceedings of the 2004 IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation},
volume = {4},
pages = {4198--4203},
year = {2004},
address = { New Orleans, LA },
month = {April}
}

@InProceedings{ Konolige03 ,
author = {Kurt Konolige},
title = {Map Merging for Distributed Robot Navigation},
booktitle = {Proceedings of the 2003 IEEE International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems},
pages = {212--217},
year = {2003},
address = { Las Vegas, NV },
month = {October}
}

@inproceedings{cox05b,
author = {Jeffrey S. Cox and Edmund H. Durfee},
title = {An efficient algorithm for multiagent plan coordination},
booktitle = {AAMAS '05: Proceedings of the fourth international joint conference on Autonomous agents and multiagent systems},
year = {2005},
pages = {828--835},
location = {The Netherlands},
publisher = {ACM Press},
address = {New York, NY, USA},
}

@inproceedings{cox05,
author = {Jeffrey S. Cox and Edmund H. Durfee and Thomas Bartold},
title = {A distributed framework for solving the Multiagent Plan Coordination Problem},
booktitle = {AAMAS '05: Proceedings of the fourth international joint conference on Autonomous agents and multiagent systems},
year = {2005},
pages = {821--827},
location = {The Netherlands},
publisher = {ACM Press},
address = {New York, NY, USA},
}

@inproceedings{ gerkey03,
author={Brian P. Gerkey and Maja J Matari\'{c}},
title={Multi-Robot Task Allocation: Analyzing the Complexity and Optimality of Key Architectures},
booktitle = {Proc. of the IEEE Intl. Conf. on Robotics and Automation ({ICRA})},
year = {2003},
address = {Taipei, Taiwan},
month = {May}
}

@Article{surveys_multirobot,
author = "Parker, L. E.",
title = "Current Research in Multi-Robot Systems",
journal = "Journal of Artificial Life and Robotics",
year = 2003,
volume = 7,
}

@inproceedings{stentz04,
author = { Anthony Stentz and M. Bernardine Dias and Robert Zlot and Nidhi Kalra },
title = {Real Market-based Approaches for Coordination of Multi-robot Teams at Different Granularities of Interaction },
year = {2004},
booktitle = { American Nuclear Society 10th International Conference on Robotics and Remote Systems for Hazardous Environments }
}

@article{huntsberger03:campout,
author = {Terry Huntsberger, Paolo Pirjanian, Ashitey Trebi-Ollennu, Hari Das Nayar, Hrand Aghazarian, Anthony J. Ganino, Mike Garrett},
title = {CAMPOUT: a control architecture for tightly coupled coordination of multirobot systems for planetary surface exploration},
journal = { IEEE Transactions on Systems, Man and Cybernetics, Part A},
volume = {33},
number = {5},
year = {2003}
}

@article{chaimowicz04:paradigm,
author = {Luiz Chaimowicz and Vijay Kumar and M. Campos},
title = {A Paradigm for Dynamic Coordination of Multiple Robots},
journal = {Autonomous Robots},
volume = {17},
number = {1},
year = {2004}
}

@inproceedings{spector2004-gecco,
author = { Lee Spector and Jon Klein and Chris Perry and Mark Feinstein },
title = { Emergence of Collective Behavior in Evolving Populations of Flying Agents },
pages = { 61--73 },
year = 2003,
publisher = { Springer-Verlag },
booktitle = { Proceedings of the Genetic and Evolutionary Computation Conference (GECCO-2003) },
url = { http://hampshire.edu/lspector/gecco2003-collective.html }
}

@inproceedings{vaughan2000-agents,
author = { Richard T. Vaughan and Kasper Stoy and Gaurav S. Sukhatme and Maja J. Mataric },
title = { Whistling in the Dark: Cooperative Trail Following in Uncertain Localization Space },
year = 2000,
booktitle = { Proceedings of the International Conference on Autonomous Agents },
url = { http://www.cs.sfu.ca/~vaughan/papers/vaughan_agents00.pdf }
}

@InCollection{riley2002,
author = {Patrick Riley and Manuela Veloso and Gal Kaminka},
title = {An Empirical Study of Coaching},
booktitle = {Distributed Autonomous Robotic Systems 5},
publisher = {Springer-Verlag},
pages = {215--224},
year = 2002,
editor = {H. Asama and T. Arai and T. Fukuda and T. Hasegawa}
}

@InCollection{riley2000,
author = {Patrick Riley and Manuela Veloso},
title = {On Behavior Classification in Adversarial
Environments},
booktitle = {Distributed Autonomous Robotic Systems 4},
pages = {371--380},
publisher = {Springer-Verlag},
year = 2000,
editor = {Lynne E. Parker and George Bekey and Jacob Barhen}
}

@MISC{sukthankar-brims2005,
author = "Gita Sukthankar and Katia Sycara",
title = "Identifying Physical Team Behaviors from Spatial Relationships",
year = "2005",
note = "in review"
}

@inproceedings{maheswaran04,
author = {Rajiv T. Maheswaran and Milind Tambe and Emma Bowring and Jonathan P. Pearce and Pradeep Varakantham},
title = {Taking {DCOP} to the Real World: Efficient Complete Solutions for Distributed Multi-Event Scheduling},
booktitle = {Proc. of the Third International Joint Conference on Autonomous Agents and Multiagent Systems},
year = {2004},
pages = {310--317},
location = {New York, New York},
}

Archived Schedules

Spring 2006:

Week

Date

Discussion Leader

Topic

Room

Readings

Notes

1

Feb. 3, 2006 P. Scerri Large Scale Sensor Fusion NSH 1505 Shen06 Rosencrantz03  

2

Feb. 10, 2006 CANCELED  

 

3

Feb. 17, 2006 Y. Seo Agent Networks NSH 2507 Gaston05 Axtell00 notes

4

Feb. 24, 2006 C. Murray
G. Gordon
Multirobot negotiation NSH 2507 Contact for pdf

5

Mar. 3, 2006 R. Zlot Objective functions and bidding rules WeH 4625 Tovey05 Lagoudakis05

6

Mar. 10, 2006 CANCELED Midsemester break


7

Mar. 17, 2006 CANCELED Spring break


7

Mar. 24, 2006 CANCELED Scheduling Conflicts


8

Mar. 31, 2006 B. Yu Partially Observable Stochastic Games WeH 4625 Emery04 Hansen04

9

April 7, 2006 J. Wang USARsim WeH 4625 Wang06 Lewis03

10

April 14, 2006 S. Stancliff Mission reliability prediction for mobile robot teams WeH 4625 Mary's CS AFS space (/afs/cs/user/mberna/): IJARS_Stancliff.pdf and IROS_2006_Stancliff.pdf

11

April 21, 2006 CANCELED Spring Carnival/CS50


12

April 28, 2006 K. Stubbs Distributed Human Robot Interaction WeH 4625 Contact for PDF

Fall 2005:

Week

Date

Discussion Leader

Topic

Room

Readings

Notes

1

Sept. 23, 2005

M. Koes

Distributed Multiagent Plan Coordination

NSH 2507

Cox05-1 Cox05-2

(notes)

2

Sept. 30, 2005

G. Sukthankar

Activity Recognition for Physically-Embodied Agent Teams

NSH 1507

Thesis Proposal Practice Talk

3

Oct. 7, 2005 R. Zlot Task reallocation in dynamic environments

11 am
NSH 1505

McLurkin05
Matsubara05

4

Oct. 14, 2005 B. Sellner,
L. Hiatt,
F. Heger
TRESTLE

11 am
NSH 3001

Trestle

5

Oct. 21, 2005


Cancelled for midsemester break




6

Oct. 28, 2005

E.G. Jones

Balancing profit and flexibility in a partially committed market-based MAS

12N in NSH 1109


FRC Seminar

7

Nov. 4, 2005

P. Scerri

Traffic Management: Is it an interesting multiagent problem?

1:30 in NSH 2507

Dresner05 Balmer04


8

Nov. 11, 2005

L. Xu

Map Merging in Multi-robot Systems

10:30-11:30 in NSH 1507

Howard05 Konolige03

Notes

9

Nov. 18, 2005

S. Okamoto

Privacy in Multiagent Systems

9:30-10:30 in NSH A507

Otterloo05 Maheswaran05


10

Nov. 25, 2005


Cancelled for Thanksgiving




11

Dec. 2, 2005

B. Yu

Task allocation in Robotic Systems

10-11:00am in NSH 1505

Sarne05 Ortiz05

Notes

12

Dec. 9, 2005

EVERYBODY

Potluck: bring a question/topic/challenge you find interesting

11am-noon in NSH 1505

None

Optional: bring food to share

 

 

Spring 2005:

Week

Date

Discussion Leader

Topic

Room

Readings

Notes

1

Feb. 2, 2005

T. Harris

Human Multi-robot interaction

NSH 1505

Harris05

 

2

Feb. 9, 2005

N. Kalra

Swarm system methodology

NSH 1505

Martinoli04

 

3

Feb. 16, 2005

P. Scerri

Large scale coordination-LA-DCOP

NSH 1505

LA-DCOP, Reconfigurable Teams

(notes)

4

Feb. 23, 2005

G. Sukthankar

Behavior recognition for multiagent teams

NSH 1505

Brims05, Riley/Veloso

(notes)

5

Mar. 2, 2005

M. Koes

Coordination in the search and rescue domain

NSH 1505

RoboRescue Rules, Nourbakhsh05, Mary's notes

(notes)

6

Mar. 9, 2005

CANCELLED (Spring Break)

7

Mar. 17, 2005

D. Ferguson

Partially Observable Stochastic Games

NSH 1505

Emery04, Emery05

 

8

Mar. 23, 2005

G. Gordon

Distributed Planning in Hierarchical Factored MDPs

NSH 1505

Guestrin02

 

9

Mar. 30, 2005

R. Zlot

Coordination for Tasks with Multiple Solutions

NSH 1505

Tang05, Zlot05

 

10

Apr. 6, 2005

M. Koes

Distributed constraint optimization

NSH 1505

Maheswaran04

 

11

Apr. 13, 2005

M. Roth

Multiagent MDPs and POMDPs

NSH 4201

Bernstein00

(notes)

12

Apr. 20, 2005

E.G. Jones

Extending market based mechanisms for multirobot planning

NSH 1505

Schneider05

 

13

Apr. 27, 2005

B. Argall

Robot Soccer

NSH 1505

Bowling04

 

 

 

Fall 2004:

Week

Date

Discussion Leader

Topic

Room

Readings

Notes

1

Oct.15,2004

M. Koes

Planning session

NSH 1507

 

 

2

Oct.22,2004

M. Koes

Issues in MAS/MRS: An Introduction

NSH 1507

Parker03, Gerkey03

(notes)

3

Oct.29,2004

N. Kalra, R. Zlot

Market based task allocation for multirobot systems

NSH A507

Stentz04, Zlot-Notes

(additional reading) (notes)

4

Nov.5,2004

N. Kalra, R. Zlot

Tight versus loose multirobot coordination (market based)

NSH 1505

Chaimowicz, Campout, ICRA05

(notes)

5

Nov.12,2004

CANCELLED

 

 

 

6

Nov.19,2004

P. Scerri

Team Theory: BDI and STEAM

NSH 1505

Tambe97, Scerri04

 

7

Dec.3,2004

CANCELLED (Nidhi's Proposal)

 

 

 

8

Dec.10,2004

G. Barlow

Biologically Inspired Systems

NSH 4201

Spector04,
Vaughan00

(notes)

 

TERM BREAK