September 06, 2013, HFH 4164

Heterogeneity has emerged as an important aspect of multiagent systems, in which agents with various functionalities interact with each other to accomplish complex tasks. Inter-agent interactions allow agents to compliment each others' resources and capabilities; thus enhancing the collective functionality of the system. In multiagent systems, heterogeneity can be understood along a number of dimensions, including dissimilarities between agents, relative number of non-homogeneous agents, and interactions among agents of various types. In this work, we aim to investigate and formalize heterogeneity from a network topology perspective. A multiagent network is modeled by a graph; a graph coloring problem is then formulated to examine an inter-relationship between the network topology and the distribution of agents with various capabilities within a network. The goal is to maximally exploit heterogeneous resources available within the network through these local interactions. Various applications in areas of energy-efficient wireless sensor and actor networks, eternal security in multiagent systems, and persistent coverage are explored.

W. Abbas received his Masters from Georgia Tech in 2010 and currently is a Ph.D candidate there working as a research assistant in Georgia Robotics and Intelligent Systems Lab. He is also a Fulbright fellow since 2009. Waseem’s research interests include network control systems and graph theoretic methods for multiagent system