<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<?xml-stylesheet href="client.xsl" type="text/xsl"?>
<article article-type="other">
<front>
<journal-meta>
<journal-id/>
<issn/>
<banner>
<!--<href>banner.jpg</href>-->
<size width="100%"/>
</banner>
</journal-meta>
<article-meta>
<title-group>
<article-title>Computing effective communication policies in multiagent systems</article-title>
</title-group>

<author><a href="mailto:doran@utulsa.edu"><name>Doran Chakraborty</name></a></author>
<aff>Mathematical &amp; Computer Sciences Department, University of Tulsa, Tulsa, Oklahoma, USA</aff>

<author><a href="mailto:sandip@utulsa.edu"><name>Sandip Sen</name></a></author>
<aff>Mathematical &amp; Computer Sciences Department, University of Tulsa, Tulsa, Oklahoma, USA</aff>
</article-meta></front>
<body>
<abstract>
<title>ABSTRACT</title>
<p>Communication is a key tool for facilitating multiagent coordination in cooperative and uncertain domains. We focus on a class of multiagent problems modeled as Decentralized Markov Decision Processes with Communication (DEC-MDP-COM) with local observability. The planning problem for computing the optimal communication strategy in such domains is often formulated with the assumption of the knowledge of optimal domain-level policy. Computing the optimal communication policy is NP-complete. There is a need, then, for heuristic solutions that trade-off performance with efficiency. We present a decision theoretic approach for computing optimal communication policies in stochastic environments which uses a branching future representation and evaluates only those decisions that an agent is likely to encounter. The communication strategy computed off-line is used in the more probable scenarios that the agent would face in future. Our approach also allows agents to compute communication policies at run-time in the unlikely event of the agents facing scenarios that were discarded while computing the off-line policy.</p> 
</abstract>
<fpdf>
<href>pdflogo.jpg</href>
<hpdf>AAMAS07_0566_cbf840fcd623f0c5d272e94a8eef1142</hpdf>
</fpdf>
</body>
</article>

