Forming Proactive Team Cooperation by Observations

Proactivity is the ability to take initiative by exhibiting goal-directed behavior. Agents with proactivity can respond to dynamic environment in a timely way. Hence the ability to anticipate the information needs of teammates and assist them proactively is highly desirable. This research is directed toward helping agents produce effective communication through observations. We show how agents can use observation to estimate the teammates’ beliefs and proactively provide the information that the teammates need. We present two experiments that explore: 1) effectiveness of different aspects of observability; 2) scalability of using observability with respect to the number of agents in a team.

Authors and Affiliations

1. Computer Science Department, Trinity University, San Antonio, TX, 78212

   Yu Zhang

2. Computer Science Department, Texas A&M University, College Station, TX, 77843

   Richard A. Volz

Editors and Affiliations

1. School of Business, La Trobe University, 3086, Melbourne, Victoria, Australia

   Rajiv Khosla

2. Centre for SMART systems Engineering Research Centre, University of Brighton, Moulsecoomb, BN2 4GJ, Brighton, UK

   Robert J. Howlett

3. School of Electrical and Information Engineering, Knowledge Based Intelligent Engineering Systems Centre, University of South Australia, 5095, Mawson Lakes, SA, Australia

   Lakhmi C. Jain

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© 2005 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg

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