Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
Communication used
to coordinate actions
Plan
Act
Perceive
Fig. 7.6.
Cooperative actions
7.2.3 Cooperative Actions
Cooperative actions result when autonomous agents work together to achieve
the desired objective. Tightly coupled actions result in a form of cooperation
Cooperative actions are usually coupled with other forms of cooperation.
Satellites flying in formation to collect coordinated imagery are an exam-
ple of cooperative actions. The individual vehicles must cooperate to keep
themselves in the proper position and orientation with respect to each other.
However, to achieve this high level cooperation, there must be another lower
level cooperation that actually keeps the vehicles in formation (possibly some
form of closed loop control).
Cooperative Perception
Autonomous agents use cooperative perception when they need to fuse their
individual perception information into a single common perception. This pro-
cess is commonly called data fusion or multisensor fusion [
91
,
192
]. Many
different techniques have been developed that fuse either similar or dissimilar
kinds of information into a common model of the perceived world. This form
A good example of cooperative perception is when imagery is collected on
the same region of the earth in different spectral bands. When these differ-
ent views of the region are merged into a single common view, the resulting
data are more than the sum of the parts. Another example is the advisors an
executive may talk to before a dicult decision. Each advisor has different
perceptions of the situation at hand and the consequences of any particu-
lar action. The executive weighs the individual contributions and makes a
decision.
This completes the discussion of a formal model for cooperative autonomy.
An overview of current spacecraft mission management will now be offered to
provide a foundation for discussing the application of cooperative autonomy
technologies.
