TY - JOUR
T1 - Enhancing intelligent agent collaboration for flow optimization of railroad traffic
AU - Blum, Jeremy
AU - Eskandarian, Azim
N1 - Funding Information:
This research was partially supported by Subcontract no. 35352-6085 with Cornell University under contract W08333-04 from EPRI and the US Army Research Office.
PY - 2002/12
Y1 - 2002/12
N2 - Intelligent agents have successfully solved the train pathing problem on a small portion of railroad network [Tsen, 1995, Ph.D. Thesis, Carnegie Mellon University, USA]. As the railroad network grows, it is imperative that the agents collaborate to operate as efficiently as possible. In this paper, the authors demonstrate a collaboration protocol based on a conditional measure of agent effectiveness. Because agent effectiveness is not directly measurable, a suitable metric for agent effectiveness is introduced. Where typically agents run with uniform frequency, the collaboration protocol schedules the agents with a frequency proportional to their expected effectiveness. This protocol introduced a 10-fold improvement in the agent efficiency when tested with a simulation program on a portion of the Burlington Northern railroad.
AB - Intelligent agents have successfully solved the train pathing problem on a small portion of railroad network [Tsen, 1995, Ph.D. Thesis, Carnegie Mellon University, USA]. As the railroad network grows, it is imperative that the agents collaborate to operate as efficiently as possible. In this paper, the authors demonstrate a collaboration protocol based on a conditional measure of agent effectiveness. Because agent effectiveness is not directly measurable, a suitable metric for agent effectiveness is introduced. Where typically agents run with uniform frequency, the collaboration protocol schedules the agents with a frequency proportional to their expected effectiveness. This protocol introduced a 10-fold improvement in the agent efficiency when tested with a simulation program on a portion of the Burlington Northern railroad.
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U2 - 10.1016/S0965-8564(02)00002-2
DO - 10.1016/S0965-8564(02)00002-2
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:0036894026
VL - 36
SP - 919
EP - 930
JO - Transportation Research, Part A: Policy and Practice
JF - Transportation Research, Part A: Policy and Practice
SN - 0965-8564
IS - 10
ER -