Employing human knowledge to solve integrated coordination problems

• Published in: 2010 International Symposium on Collaborative Technologies and Systems pp. 285 - 294
• Main Authors: Wei Chen, Tang, Kaizhi, Mihalcik, David, Yunshen Tang, Durfee, Edmund, Dumas, Melanie
• Format: Conference Proceeding
• Language: English
• Published: IEEE 01.05.2010
• Subjects: Architectures and Design of Collaborative Systems; Collaboration; Collaborative work; Computer architecture; Humans; Intelligent & Autonomous Agents in Collaboration; Intelligent agent; Medical control systems; Medical simulation; Multi Agent Systems in Collaboration; Multiagent systems; Problem-solving; Scheduling
• ISBN: 1424466199; 9781424466191
• DOI: 10.1109/CTS.2010.5478499

An Integrated Coordination Problem involves solving multiple related subproblems that collectively satisfy the requirements of a user, including subproblems that depend on the user's participation to solve. Fundamental challenges in solving such a problem include defining mechanisms to solve the individual subproblems, formulating the information and control flow between these mechanisms that supports flexible end-to-end problem-solving, and providing access for people to oversee and participate in the problem-solving process. In this paper, we describe a multi-agent architecture that addresses these challenges by embodying mechanisms in computational agents and by treating the collective problem-solving across agents and people as a collaborative process. We argue that our approach exploits concepts that straddle the boundary between collaborative technologies and multi-agent systems, and demonstrate its advantages and capabilities in the context of an emergency medical response scenario.