Networked Distributed POMDPs: A Synthesis of Distributed Constraint Optimization and POMDPs

In many real-world multiagent applications such as distributed sensor nets, a network of agents is formed based on each agent's limited interactions with a small number of neighbors. While distributed POMDPs capture the real-world uncertainty in multiagent domains, they fail to exploit such loc...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: NAIR, Ranjit, VARAKANTHAM, Pradeep Reddy, Tambe, Milind, Yokoo, Makoto
Format: text
Language:English
Published: Institutional Knowledge at Singapore Management University 2005
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Online Access:https://ink.library.smu.edu.sg/sis_research/955
http://portal.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=1619356
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Institution: Singapore Management University
Language: English
Description
Summary:In many real-world multiagent applications such as distributed sensor nets, a network of agents is formed based on each agent's limited interactions with a small number of neighbors. While distributed POMDPs capture the real-world uncertainty in multiagent domains, they fail to exploit such locality of interaction. Distributed constraint optimization (DCOP) captures the locality of interaction but fails to capture planning under uncertainty. This paper present a new model synthesized from distributed POMDPs and DCOPs, called Networked Distributed POMDPs (ND-POMDPs). Exploiting network structure enables us to present two novel algorithms for ND-POMDPs: a distributed policy generation algorithm that performs local search and a systematic policy search that is guaranteed to reach the global optimal.