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

Multirobot/Multiagent Reading Group

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