9 Smart Control for Collective Agents by Adaptive Strategic Mechanism

Recent advances in a multi-agent system are standing on the basis how to treat several agents from a viewpoint of the agent approach. This paper proposes a new concept “Smart Control for Collective Agents” and a new methodology “Adaptive Strategic Mechanism for Collective Agents” from a viewpoint of adaptation in natural. Then, they are applied to a various kind of collective agents' problems. The smart control means that the collective agents explore their proper strategy through the adaptation under dynamic and ill-known environments, and that each agent makes an autonomous decision under the explored strategy as if he∕she has intelligence. Based on the smart control, some behavior patterns for the collective agents emerge and they are controlled to be adaptable for the environments. The collective agents can often be considered as a mobile multi-robot in a robotics field. However, the proposed concept and methodology are applicable to other engineering field such as an information network, a social behavior, and so on. In order to verify the proposed concept and methodology concretely, several examples are shown.