Cooperative Task Processing
Theodore P. Pavlic, Kevin M. Passino · 2009
This work describes the dynamical behavior of agents that can each share the task-processing burden of their immediate neighbors. The work is influenced by studies of the evolution of cooperation and extends existing work in the design of resource allocation strategies on cooperative agents. A framework for shared task processing on a network is presented, and theoretical results show sufficient conditions on distributed and asynchronous agent behaviors that guarantee an optimal allocation of task-processing resources on the network. The framework is shown to be applicable for autonomous air vehicles (AAV), mobile software agents, and smart power grids, and simulation results are given for an AAV case. An outline for future research directions, including expanding the framework for processing time constraints and reciprocity mechanisms, is also presented.