Trait-based Coordination of Heterogenous Multi-Agent Teams

Harish Ravichandar, Georgia Institute of Technology

2/18/2021

Location: Zoom

Time: 2:40p.m.

Abstract:Heterogeneous multi-agent teams have the potential to carry out complex multi-task operations that are intractable for their homogeneous counterparts. Indeed, heterogeneous teams can impact a wide variety of domains, such as disaster relief, warehouse automation, autonomous driving, defense, and environmental monitoring. However, effective coordination of such teams requires the careful consideration of the teams’ diverse, but finite, resources, as well as its ability to satisfy complex requirements associated with concurrent tasks. In this talk, I will introduce a family of application-agnostic approaches that can coordinate heterogenous multi-agent teams by effectively leveraging the relative strengths of agents when satisfying the requirements of different tasks. A unifying theme across these approaches is that both agents and tasks are modeled in terms of capabilities (i.e., traits). As such, these approaches are readily generalizable to new teams and agents without much additional modeling or computational effort. In particular, I will discuss techniques and challenges associated with i) forming effective coalitions that can satisfy known requirements of heterogenous tasks, and ii) learning how to coordinate heterogenous teams from human experts when exact requirements are unavailable.