An Investigation of the Impact of Communication Strategies on the Cooperative Behavior of Multiple, Cooperating Autonomous Underwater Vehicles. Phase 1

Autonomous Underwater Vehicles (AUVs) hold great promise for use in ocean science and engineering, environmental monitoring, commercial endeavors, and law enforcement and military applications. However, much research remains to be done before AUVs fulfill their promise. Among the many areas which could be targeted for research, we consider the development of multiple cooperating AUV systems to be one of the most important. This paper reports the results of a pilot study aimed at shedding some light on issues related to communication between multiple cooperative AUVs. We were initially concerned with ways to reduce the impact of the inherent uncertainty present in the domain on communication and cooperative problem solving. We began developing a framework for utilizing situation specific schemas representing communication strategies to control communication. While considering the effect of noise and partial knowledge on communication, our attention was drawn to the inadequacy of intention-based communication methods for our domain. Consequently, we began to look at methods of utilizing stereotypical knowledge structures to reduce uncertainty and we have begun to look at ways to interpret a message's content based on the needs of the receiver, not the inferred intentions of the sender. (RH)