Design and Performance Verification of an Optimized Multi-agent System

Abstract

The multi-agent system (MAS) mainly focuses on group control and network control. The existing studies on the MAS have not clearly defined the system performance, especially network saturation, agent load capacity and data transfer delay. To solve the problem, this paper develops a basic MAS communication framework, and proposes the optimized serial line Internet protocol (O-SLIP). The protocol can be deployed in any agent object and any layer, unifying the communication between the objects in the MAS system, and lays the basis for group control, consistency check, etc. Then, the proposed framework and the O-SLIP were verified through tests on network saturation, agent load capacity and transmission delay. Finally, the author summed up the important issues in the selection and design of MAS communication systems.In summary, many algorithms and control methods have been developed for groups (i.e. swarms or collectives) of decentralized cooperating robots, called a swarm or collective. These algorithms are generally meant to control collectives of hundreds or even thousands of robots. However, they are generally validated in simulation only, or on a limited number of robots, for reasons of cost, time, or complexity. The network architecture and its organization are explained in terms of components. What is worse, there is a lack of a widely applicable, protocol-wide communication protocol across the MAS compartment. The performance of the MAS and its communication has not been fully described and discussed, especially under multiple agents. To overcome these problems, this paper designs a communication framework and an optimized serial line Internet protocol (O-SLIP) for the BigPan series MAS system.The remainder of this paper is organized as follows: Section 2 introduces the basic requirements on the MAS design, reviews the main techniques of wireless communication, and explains the reasons for choosing WiFi; Section 3 designs the basic communication network, highlighting the system architecture, socket-based connection, the O-SLIP, as well as message encapsulation and parsing; Section 4 sets up an MAS communication system and details the two key processes: agent registration-logout and terminal control; Section 5 verifies the performance of the proposed system in terms of network saturation, agent load capacity and data transmission delay; Section 6 wraps up this paper with several conclusions. MAS WIRELESS NETWORK ENVIRONMENTThis paper mainly considers common low-power wireless communication techniques like Bluetooth and Wi-Fi. This is because low power consumption is conducive to the service life of the system, while the power and frequency bands of wireless communication are restricted by national laws and regulations. General civil license requires that the power consumption of wireless communication system should fall between 100mW and 500mW.

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