Evolving Cooperation Strategies.
Thomas D. Haynes, Roger L. Wainwright, Sandip Sen · 1995
The identification, design, and implementation of strategies for cooperation is a central research issue in the field of Distributed Artificial Intelligence (DAI). We propose a novel approach to the construction of cooperation strategies for a group of problem solvers based on the Genetic Programming (GP) paradigm. GPs are a class of adaptive algorithms used to evolve solution structures that optimize a given evaluation criterion. Our approach is based on designing a representation for cooperation strategies that can be manipulated by GPs. We present results from experiments in the predator-prey domain, which has been extensively studied as a easy-to-describe but difficult-to-solve cooperation problem domain. The key aspect of our approach is the minimal reliance on domain knowledge and human intervention in the construction of good cooperation strategies. Promising comparison results with prior systems lend credence to the viability of this approach.