Cooperative Control Method Using Evaluation Information on Objective Achievement

Abstract

This paper presents a cooperative control method for a multi-agent system. The fundamental concept of this method is the control based on the evaluation on objective achievement of multi-agent systems. Each robot communicates not directly by sensory data, but by qualitative evaluation of achievement level. Each robot calculates global evaluation on the achievement of the team's objective by agents' evaluations. This method enables a robot to perform flexible cooperation based on the global evaluation on achievement of objectives. As an example, the method is applied to the EIGEN team robots for the Middle Size League of RoboCup which is international soccer robot project, since it is necessary for the soccer robots to cooperate each other under dynamic environment. As a result its effectiveness was demonstrated.