Keywords

Coalition Formation, Coalitions, Coalition, Agents, Agent, Mutli-Agent, Multi-Agent Systems, Unmanned Air Vehicle, Unmanned Air Vehicles, Unmanned Aerial Vehicle, Unmanned Aerial Vehicles, UAV

Abstract

Coalitions are collections of agents that join together to solve a common problem that either cannot be solved individually or can be solved more efficiently as a group. Each individual agent has capabilities that can benefit the group when working together as a coalition. Typically, individual capabilities are joined together in an additive way when forming a coalition. This work will introduce a new operator that is used when combining capabilities, and suggest that the behavior of the operator is contextual, depending on the nature of the capability itself. This work considers six different capabilities of Unmanned Air Vehicles (UAV) and determines the nature of the new operator in the context of each capability as coalitions (squadrons) of UAVs are formed. Coalitions are formed using three different search algorithms, both with and without heuristics: Depth-First, Depth-First Iterative Deepening, and Genetic Algorithm (GA). The effectiveness of each algorithm is evaluated. Multi agent-based UAV simulation software was developed and used to test the ideas presented. In addition to coalition formation, the software aims to address additional multi-agent issues such as agent identity, mutability, and communication as applied to UAV systems, in a realistic simulated environment. Social potential fields provide a means of modeling a clustering attractive force at the same time as a collision-avoiding repulsive force, and are used by the simulation to maintain aircraft position relative to other UAVs.

Notes

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Graduation Date

2005

Semester

Spring

Advisor

Boloni, Ladislau

Degree

Master of Science in Computer Engineering (M.S.Cp.E.)

College

College of Engineering and Computer Science

Department

Electrical and Computer Engineering

Degree Program

Computer Engineering

Format

application/pdf

Identifier

CFE0000394

URL

http://purl.fcla.edu/fcla/etd/CFE0000394

Language

English

Release Date

May 2005

Length of Campus-only Access

None

Access Status

Masters Thesis (Open Access)

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