The Multi-Agent Programming Contest: A Résumé

Ahlbrecht, Tobias; Dix, Jürgen; Fiekas, Niklas; Krausburg, Tabajara

doi:10.1007/978-3-030-59299-8_1

Cited by 12 publications

(8 citation statements)

References 16 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…The 2019 edition of MAPC [1] introduced the Agents Assemble scenario, where two teams of multiple agents compete to assemble complex block structures. Agents have incomplete information about their grid map environment.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Formal Verification of a Map Merging Protocol in the Multi-Agent Programming Contest

Luckcuck¹,

C.²

2021

Preprint

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Communication is a critical part of enabling multi-agent systems to cooperate. This means that applying formal methods to protocols governing communication within multi-agent systems provides useful confidence in its reliability. In this paper, we describe the formal verification of a complex communication protocol that coordinates agents merging maps of their environment. The protocol was used by the LFC team in the 2019 edition of the Multi-Agent Programming Contest (MAPC). Our specification of the protocol is written in Communicating Sequential Processes (CSP), which is a well-suited approach to specifying agent communication protocols due to its focus on concurrent communicating systems. We validate the specification's behaviour using scenarios where the correct behaviour is known, and verify that eventually all the maps have merged.

show abstract

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Formal Verification of a Map Merging Protocol in the Multi-Agent Programming Contest

Luckcuck¹,

C.²

2021

Preprint

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…In this paper, we focus on the strategies used by our team, the Manchester and Liverpool Formidable Constructors (MLFC). We provide some context and basic concepts of the scenario and the simulation environment; however, we assume the reader has some prior knowledge about the Multi-Agent Programming Contest (MAPC) 1 in order to better understand our contributions.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The 15 th edition of the MAPC 2 is part of an annual competition in the area of multi-agent programming. This latest edition extended the "Agents Assemble" scenario from the 14 th MAPC [1]. The main goal of the scenario remained the same: two teams of agents compete in a 2D grid to fulfil tasks that are randomly generated by the simulation server, and those teams that complete tasks successfully receive some currency, with the aim of maximising this currency.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The main contribution of this work is in the description of the new strategies that were developed specifically for the 15 th MAPC. These strategies include: cartography -this tackles extension (1) to make our agents capable of discovering the size of the map (information that is unknown during a match); verification of map merging -in order to increase the confidence that our previous strategy for merging map information works well when scaling the number of agents, we performed a formal verification of our protocol (thus addressing extension (2)); plan cache -our previous strategy of using automated planners to plan the movement of our agents in the grid had to be adapted to cope with extension (2); achieving tasks -small changes were necessary to address extension (3), but a number of more significant modifications were required to make efficiency improvements necessary due to extension (2); and bullies -the additional agents from extension (2) allowed us to focus some of them to the task of disrupting the activities of the opposing team.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 1 more Smart Citation

MLFC: From 10 to 50 Planners in the Multi-Agent Programming Contest

Cardoso,

Ferrando,

Papacchini

et al. 2021

Preprint

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

In this paper, we describe the strategies used by our team, MLFC, that led us to achieve the 2 nd place in the 15 th edition of the Multi-Agent Programming Contest. The scenario used in the contest is an extension of the previous edition (14 th ) "Agents Assemble" wherein two teams of agents move around a 2D grid and compete to assemble complex block structures. We discuss the languages and tools used during the development of our team. Then, we summarise the main strategies that were carried over from our previous participation in the 14 th edition and list the limitations (if any) of using these strategies in the latest contest edition. We also developed new strategies that were made specifically for the extended scenario: cartography (determining the size of the map); formal verification of the map merging protocol (to provide assurances that it works when increasing the number of agents); plan cache (efficiently scaling the number of planners); task achievement (forming groups of agents to achieve tasks); and bullies (agents that focus on stopping agents from the opposing team). Finally, we give a brief overview of our performance in the contest and discuss what we believe were our shortcomings.

show abstract

“…Each match has three rounds, and the map used in each round is generated randomly. A complete description of the scenario is available in [1]. For the remainder of this paper, we only describe the features of the scenario that are relevant to the strategy being discussed.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

LFC: Combining Autonomous Agents and Automated Planning in the Multi-Agent Programming Contest

C.¹,

Ferrando²,

Papacchini³

2020

Preprint

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

The 2019 Multi-Agent Programming Contest introduced a new scenario, Agents Assemble, where two teams of agents move around a 2D grid and compete to assemble complex block structures. In this paper, we describe the strategies used by our team that led us to achieve first place in the contest. Our strategies tackle some of the major challenges in the 2019 contest: how to explore and build a map when agents only have access to local vision and no global coordinates; how to move around the map efficiently even though there are dynamic events that can change the cells in the grid; and how to assemble and submit complex block structures given that the opposing team may try to sabotage us. To implement our strategies, we use the multi-agent systems development platform JaCaMo to program our agents and the Fast Downward planner to plan the movement of the agent in the grid. We also provide a brief discussion of our matches in the contest and give our analysis of how our team performed in each match.

show abstract

The Multi-Agent Programming Contest: A Résumé

Cited by 12 publications

References 16 publications

Formal Verification of a Map Merging Protocol in the Multi-Agent Programming Contest

Formal Verification of a Map Merging Protocol in the Multi-Agent Programming Contest

MLFC: From 10 to 50 Planners in the Multi-Agent Programming Contest

LFC: Combining Autonomous Agents and Automated Planning in the Multi-Agent Programming Contest

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About