• Industrial Engineering and Management Systems
• /
• v.8 no.3
• /
• pp.181-193
• /
• 2009

This paper presents a framework for controlling mobile multiple robots connected by communication networks. This framework provides novel methods to control coordinated systems using mobile agents. The combination of the mobile agent and mobile multiple robots opens a new horizon of efficient use of mobile robot resources. Instead of physical movement of multiple robots, mobile software agents can migrate from one robot to another so that they can minimize energy consumption in aggregation. The imaginary application is making "carts," such as found in large airports, intelligent. Travelers pick up carts at designated points but leave them arbitrary places. It is a considerable task to re-collect them. It is, therefore, desirable that intelligent carts (intelligent robots) draw themselves together automatically. Simple implementation may be making each cart has a designated assembly point, and when they are free, automatically return to those points. It is easy to implement, but some carts have to travel very long way back to their own assembly point, even though it is located close to some other assembly points. It consumes too much unnecessary energy so that the carts have to have expensive batteries. In order to ameliorate the situation, we employ mobile software agents to locate robots scattered in a field, e.g. an airport, and make them autonomously determine their moving behaviors by using a clustering algorithm based on the Ant Colony Optimization (ACO). ACO is the swarm intelligence-based methods, and a multi-agent system that exploit artificial stigmergy for the solution of combinatorial optimization problems. Preliminary experiments have provided a favorable result. In this paper, we focus on the implementation of the controlling mechanism of the multi-robots using the mobile agents.

• Proceedings of the KIEE Conference
• /
• 2008.07a
• /
• pp.1883-1884
• /
• 2008

This paper presents a framework for decentralized control of self-organizing swarm agents based on the artificial potential functions (APFs). The framework explores the benefits by associating agents based on position information to realize complex swarming behaviors. A key development is the introduction of a set of association rules by APFs that effectively deal with a host of swarming issues such as flexible and agile formation. In particular, this paper presents an association rule for swarming that requires less movements for each agent and compact formation among agents. Extensive simulations are presented to illustrate the viability of the proposed framework.

• Journal of the Korean Institute of Intelligent Systems
• /
• v.19 no.3
• /
• pp.355-362
• /
• 2009

In this paper, we present a framework for managing group behaviors in multi-agent swarm systems. The framework explores the benefits by dynamic associations with the proposed artificial potential functions to realize complex swarming behaviors. A key development is the introduction of a set of flocking by dynamic association (DA) algorithms that effectively deal with a host of swarming issues such as cooperation for fast migration to a target, flexible and agile formation, and inter-agent collision avoidance. In particular, the DA algorithms employ a so-called systematic singular association (SSA) rule for fast migration to a target and compact formation through inter-agent interaction. The resulting algorithms enjoy two important interrelated benefits. First, the SSA rule greatly reduces time-consuming for migration and satisfies low possibility that agents may be lost. Secondly, the SSA is advantageous for practical implementations, since it considers for agents even the case that a target is blocked by obstacles. Extensive simulation presents to illustrate the viability and effectiveness of the proposed framework.

• Journal of the Institute of Convergence Signal Processing
• /
• v.3 no.4
• /
• pp.35-41
• /
• 2002

To solve the large scale optimization problem approximately, various approaches have been introduced. They are mainly based on recent research advancement of simulations for evolutions, flocking, annealing, and interactions among organisms on artificial environments. The typical ones are simulated annealing(SA), artificial neural network(ANN), genetic algorithms(GA), tabu search(TS), etc. Recently the particle swarm optimization(PSO) has been introduced. The PSO simulates the process of birds flocking or fish schooling for food, as with the information of each agent Is share by other agents. The PSO technique has been applied to various optimization problems of which variables are continuous. However, there are seldom trials for visualization of searching process. This paper proposes a new visualization tool for searching process particle swarm optimization(PSO) algorithm. The proposed tool is effective for understanding the searching process of PSO method and educational for students.

• Journal of Information Processing Systems
• /
• v.11 no.3
• /
• pp.370-388
• /
• 2015

The localization of multi-agents, such as people, animals, or robots, is a requirement to accomplish several tasks. Especially in the case of multi-robotic applications, localization is the process for determining the positions of robots and targets in an unknown environment. Many sensors like GPS, lasers, and cameras are utilized in the localization process. However, these sensors produce a large amount of computational resources to process complex algorithms, because the process requires environmental mapping. Currently, combination multi-robots or swarm robots and sensor networks, as mobile sensor nodes have been widely available in indoor and outdoor environments. They allow for a type of efficient global localization that demands a relatively low amount of computational resources and for the independence of specific environmental features. However, the inherent instability in the wireless signal does not allow for it to be directly used for very accurate position estimations and making difficulty associated with conducting the localization processes of swarm robotics system. Furthermore, these swarm systems are usually highly decentralized, which makes it hard to synthesize and access global maps, it can be decrease its flexibility. In this paper, a simple pyramid RAM-based Neural Network architecture is proposed to improve the localization process of mobile sensor nodes in indoor environments. Our approach uses the capabilities of learning and generalization to reduce the effect of incorrect information and increases the accuracy of the agent's position. The results show that by using simple pyramid RAM-base Neural Network approach, produces low computational resources, a fast response for processing every changing in environmental situation and mobile sensor nodes have the ability to finish several tasks especially in localization processes in real time.

• Journal of the Korean Institute of Intelligent Systems
• /
• v.25 no.1
• /
• pp.42-47
• /
• 2015

This paper presents a rank-based formation for multiple agents based on potential functions, where the proposed method uses the relative position of two neighboring agents. The conventional formation scheme of multiple systems requires communication between agents and a central computer to get the positions of all multiple agents. In the study, differently from previous studies, the formation scheme uses the relative position of two neighboring agents in a local coordinate system. In addition, it introduces a singular agent association that considers only the relative position between an agent and its neighboring agents, instead of multiple associations among all information about all agents. Furthermore, the proposed framework explores the benefits of different formation types. Extensive simulation results show that the proposed approach verifies the viability and effectiveness of the proposed formation.

• Journal of Digital Convergence
• /
• v.14 no.8
• /
• pp.293-303
• /
• 2016

Analysis of bargaining games utilizing evolutionary computation in recent years has dealt with important issues in the field of game theory. In this paper, we investigated interaction and coevolution process among heterogeneous artificial agents using evolutionary computation in the bargaining game. We present three kinds of evolving-strategic agents participating in the bargaining games; genetic algorithms (GA), particle swarm optimization (PSO) and differential evolution (DE). The co-evolutionary processes among three kinds of artificial agents which are GA-agent, PSO-agent, and DE-agent are tested to observe which EC-agent shows the best performance in the bargaining game. The simulation results show that a PSO-agent is better than a GA-agent and a DE-agent, and that a GA-agent is better than a DE-agent with respect to co-evolution in bargaining game. In order to understand why a PSO-agent is the best among three kinds of artificial agents in the bargaining game, we observed the strategies of artificial agents after completion of game. The results indicated that the PSO-agent evolves in direction of the strategy to gain as much as possible at the risk of gaining no property upon failure of the transaction, while the GA-agent and the DE-agent evolve in direction of the strategy to accomplish the transaction regardless of the quantity.

• Journal of Institute of Control, Robotics and Systems
• /
• v.17 no.8
• /
• pp.760-767
• /
• 2011

The flexibility and evolvability are critical characteristics of modern manufacturing to adapt to changes from products and disturbances in the shop floor. The technologies inspired from biology and nature enable to equip the manufacturing systems with these characteristics. This paper proposes an ant colony inspired autonomous manufacturing system in which the resources on the shop floor are considered as the autonomous entities. Each entity overcomes the disturbance by itself or negotiates with the others. The swarm of cognitive agents with the ant-like pheromone based negotiation mechanism is proposed for controlling the shop floor. The functionality of the developed system is proven on the test bed.

• Journal of Computing Science and Engineering
• /
• v.9 no.2
• /
• pp.39-50
• /
• 2015

Genetic algorithm (GA) and particle swarm optimization (PSO) are two excellent approaches to multimodal optimization problems. However, slow convergence or premature convergence readily occurs because of inappropriate and inflexible evolution. In this paper, a novel optimization algorithm with a flexible grid optimization (FGO) is suggested to provide adaptive trade-off between exploration and exploitation according to the specific objective function. Meanwhile, a uniform agents array with adaptive scale is distributed on the gird to speed up the calculation. In addition, a dominance centroid and a fitness center are proposed to efficiently determine the potential guides when the population size varies dynamically. Two types of subregion division strategies are designed to enhance evolutionary diversity and convergence, respectively. By examining the performance on four benchmark functions, FGO is found to be competitive with or even superior to several other popular algorithms in terms of both effectiveness and efficiency, tending to reach the global optimum earlier. Moreover, FGO is evaluated by applying it to a parameter decision in a least squares support vector machine (LS-SVM) to verify its practical competence.

• International Journal of Fuzzy Logic and Intelligent Systems
• /
• v.8 no.1
• /
• pp.61-67
• /
• 2008

This paper introduces the multi-vehicle routing problem(MRP) which is different from the traveling sales problem(TSP), and presents the ant system(AS) applied to the MRP. The proposed MRP is a distributive model of TSP since many vehicles are used, not just one salesman in TSP and even some constraints exist. In the AS, a set of cooperating agents called vehicles cooperate to find good solutions to the MRP. To make the proposed MRP extended more, Tokyo city model(TCM) is proposed. The goal in TCM is to find a set of routes that minimizes the total traveling time such that each vehicle can reach its destination as soon as possible. The results show that the AS can effectively find a set of routes minimizing the total traveling time even though the TCM has some constraints.