Multiagent Learning Through Collective Memory

Adaptation, Coevolution, and Learning in Multiagent Systems

Volume

Papers from the 1996 AAAI Spring Symposium

Contents

Collective memory is a mechanism through which a community of agents can learn improved patterns of cooperative activity to take advantage of regularities in their domain of problem-solving activity. Collective memory is defined as the breadth of procedural knowledge the community acquires through experience when interacting with each other and the world. This knowledge may address many aspects of multiagent problem solving, but we will focus on two aspects: learning cooperative procedures and learning agents’ capabilities. We demonstrate how collective memory reduces the amount of total effort and communication needed by a community of agents to solve problems. Finally, we discuss how this model of behavior is better suited for our domain of interest than related work.