Dynamic hierarchical control for distributed problem solving

摘要

Distributed problem solving (DPS) has become one of the central topics in AI. Much research has been concerned with finding an appropriate distributed control regime. We propose the concept of dynamic, hierarchical control (DHC) for distributed problem solving.In many domains, DPS has a natural hierarchy or a subproblem hierarchy can be imposed by utilizing appropriate decomposition techniques. DHC aims at exploiting the power inherent in the hierarchical approach. It also enables the control of the problem solving process to fit the structure of a domain. This results in well-coordinated cooperation and coherent negotiation among distributed controllers.We have used the DHC to perform plant combine production planning (PCPP). This task involves the activity of a network of production units, each with possibly different characteristics, collaborating to produce various items under dynamically changing conditions. We also describe the general structure of a single controller which adopts a blackboard and a knowledge source (KS) scheduling mechanism to carry out dynamic process execution.The paper describes the results of our first solution to this problem. Finally, we discuss on-going research that aims at handling additional problems.