A bio-inspired multi-agent control framework

H. Y.K. Lau*, V. W.K. Wong, A. W.Y. Ko

*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Book Chapters | Papers in Conference ProceedingsConference paper (refereed)Researchpeer-review

Abstract

The biological world has often offered inspirations to novel approaches to solving engineering problems. This paper presents an engineering analogy of the human immune system, known as the artificial immune system (AIS) for the strategic control of multi-agent based systems such as fleet of autonomous guided vehicles or a multi-jointed manipulator. The human immune system is a complex, adaptive and highly distributed system that exhibits the behaviors of autonomy, self-organizing, distributivity, fault tolerance, robustness, learning and memory, which is underpinned by a set of theories including the immune discrimination and specificity theories. A distributed control framework is developed based on the conceptual framework of the immune system. The AIS-based multi-agent control paradigm is studied via two key mechanisms in the generalized control hierarchy, namely, detection of events and the activation of control actions. Simulation and experimental study using a fleet of autonomous guided vehicles in a material handling system to illustrate the effectiveness of the proposed framework.

Original languageEnglish
Title of host publicationProceedings of the 16th IFAC World Congress, IFAC 2005
PublisherIFAC Secretariat
Pages1-6
Number of pages6
ISBN (Print)008045108X, 9780080451084
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 2005
Externally publishedYes

Publication series

NameIFAC Proceedings Volumes (IFAC-PapersOnline)
Number1
Volume38
ISSN (Print)1474-6670

Keywords

  • Artificial intelligence
  • Intelligent control
  • Multi agent system

Fingerprint

Dive into the research topics of 'A bio-inspired multi-agent control framework'. Together they form a unique fingerprint.

Cite this