Theory And Algorithms For Cooperative Systems

Over the past several years, cooperative control and optimization have increasingly played a larger and more important role in many aspects of military sciences, biology, communications, robotics, and decision making. At the same time, cooperative systems are notoriously difficult to model, analyze, and solve — while intuitively understood, they are not axiomatically defined in any commonly accepted manner. The works in this volume provide outstanding insights into this very complex area of research. They are the result of invited papers and selected presentations at the Fourth Annual Conference on Cooperative Control and Optimization held in Destin, Florida, November 2003. This book has been selected for coverage in: • Index to Scientific & Technical Proceedings® (ISTP® / ISI Proceedings) • Index to Scientific & Technical Proceedings (ISTP CDROM version / ISI Proceedings) • CC Proceedings — Engineering & Physical Sciences Contents:Mesh Stability in Formation of Distributed Systems (C Ashokkumar et al.)On the Performance of Heuristics for Broadcast Scheduling (C Commander et al.)Coupled Detection Rates: An Introduction (D Jeffcoat)Decentralized Receding Horizon Control for Multiple UAVs (Y Kuwata & J How)Multitarget Sensor Management of Dispersed Mobile Sensors (R Mahler)K-Means Clustering Using Entropy Minimization (A Okafor & P Pardalos)Possibility Reasoning and the Cooperative Prisoner's Dilemma (H Pfister & J Walls)Coordinating Very Large Groups of Wide Area Search Munitions (P Scerri et al.)A Vehicle Following Methodology for UAV Formations (S Spry et al.)Decentralized Optimization via Nash Bargaining (S Waslander et al.)and other papers Readership: Graduate students and researchers in optimization and control, computer science and engineering. Keywords:Cooperative Systems, Cooperative Control;Optimization;Cooperative NetworksKey Features:25 chapters of creative approaches to modeling, analysis, and synthesis of cooperative systemsResearch results from top researchers in the field of cooperative systemsExciting insights to cooperative systems which have increasingly played a larger and more important role in many aspects of military sciences, biology, communications, robotics, and decision making

Over the past several years, cooperative control and optimization have increasingly played a larger and more important role in many aspects of military sciences, biology, communications, robotics, and decision making. At the same time, cooperative systems are notoriously difficult to model, analyze, and solve OCo while intuitively understood, they are not axiomatically defined in any commonly accepted manner. The works in this volume provide outstanding insights into this very complex area of research. They are the result of invited papers and selected presentations at the Fourth Annual Conference on Cooperative Control and Optimization held in Destin, Florida, November 2003. This book has been selected for coverage in: . OCo Index to Scientific & Technical Proceedings- (ISTP- / ISI Proceedings). OCo Index to Scientific & Technical Proceedings (ISTP CDROM version / ISI Proceedings). OCo CC Proceedings OCo Engineering & Physical Sciences. Contents: Mesh Stability in Formation of Distributed Systems (C Ashokkumar et al.); On the Performance of Heuristics for Broadcast Scheduling (C Commander et al.); Coupled Detection Rates: An Introduction (D Jeffcoat); Decentralized Receding Horizon Control for Multiple UAVs (Y Kuwata & J How); Multitarget Sensor Management of Dispersed Mobile Sensors (R Mahler); K-Means Clustering Using Entropy Minimization (A Okafor & P Pardalos); Possibility Reasoning and the Cooperative Prisoner''s Dilemma (H Pfister & J Walls); Coordinating Very Large Groups of Wide Area Search Munitions (P Scerri et al.); A Vehicle Following Methodology for UAV Formations (S Spry et al.); Decentralized Optimization via Nash Bargaining (S Waslander et al.); and other papers. Readership: Graduate students and researchers in optimization and control, computer science and engineering."

During the last decades, considerable progress has been observed in all aspects regarding the study of cooperative systems including modeling of cooperative systems, resource allocation, discrete event driven dynamical control, continuous and hybrid dynamical control, and theory of the interaction of information, control, and hierarchy. Solution methods have been proposed using control and optimization approaches, emergent rule based techniques, game theoretic and team theoretic approaches. Measures of performance have been suggested that include the effects of hierarchies and information structures on solutions, performance bounds, concepts of convergence and stability, and problem complexity. These and other topics were discusses at the Second Annual Conference on Cooperative Control and Optimization in Gainesville, Florida. Refereed papers written by selected conference participants from the conference are gathered in this volume, which presents problem models, theoretical results, and algorithms for various aspects of cooperative control. Audience: The book is addressed to faculty, graduate students, and researchers in optimization and control, computer sciences and engineering.

Because of the clearly important role cooperative systems play in areas such as military sciences, biology, communications, robotics, and economics, just to name a few, the study of cooperative systems has intensified. This book provides an insight in the basic understanding of cooperative systems as well as in theory, modeling, and applications of cooperative control, optimization and related problems.

A cooperative system is defined to be multiple dynamic entities that share information or tasks to accomplish a common, though perhaps not singular, objective. Examples of cooperative control systems might include: robots operating within a manufacturing cell, unmanned aircraft in search and rescue operations or military surveillance and attack missions, arrays of micro satellites that form a distributed large aperture radar, employees operating within an organization, and software agents. The term entity is most often associated with vehicles capable of physical motion such as robots, automobiles, ships, and aircraft, but the definition extends to any entity concept that exhibits a time dependent behavior. Critical to cooperation is communication, which may be accomplished through active message passing or by passive observation. It is assumed that cooperation is being used to accomplish some common purpose that is greater than the purpose of each individual, but we recognize that the individual may have other objectives as well, perhaps due to being a member of other caucuses. This implies that cooperation may assume hierarchical forms as well. The decision-making processes (control) are typically thought to be distributed or decentralized to some degree. For if not, a cooperative system could always be modeled as a single entity. The level of cooperation may be indicated by the amount of information exchanged between entities. Cooperative systems may involve task sharing and can consist of heterogeneous entities. Mixed initiative systems are particularly interesting heterogeneous systems since they are composed of humans and machines. Finally, one is often interested in how cooperative systems perform under noisy or adversary conditions. In December 2000, the Air Force Research Laboratory and the University of Florida successfully hosted the first Workshop on Cooperative Control and Optimization in Gainesville, Florida. This book contains selected refereed papers summarizing the participants' research in control and optimization of cooperative systems. Audience: Faculty, graduate students, and researchers in optimization and control, computer sciences and engineering.

The refereed proceedings of the 11th Annual International Computing and Combinatorics Conference, COCOON 2005, held in Kunming, China in August 2005. The 96 revised full papers presented together with abstracts of 3 invited talks were carefully reviewed and selected from 353 submissions. The papers cover most aspects of theoretical computer science and combinatorics related to computing and are organized in topical sections on bioinformatics, networks, string algorithms, scheduling, complexity, steiner trees, graph drawing and layout design, quantum computing, randomized algorithms, geometry, codes, finance, facility location, graph theory, graph algorithms.

This is the proceedings of the International Conference on Intelligent Computing, ICIC 2006, Kunming, China, August 2006. The book presents 165 revised full papers, carefully chosen and reviewed, organized in topical sections on fuzzy systems, fuzzy-neuro-evolutionary hybrids, supervised, unsupervised and reinforcement learning, intelligent agent and Web applications, intelligent fault diagnosis, natural language processing and expert systems, natural language human-machine interface using artificial neural networks, and intelligent financial engineering.

This volume covers recent developments in the design, operation, and management of mobile telecommunication and computer systems. Uncertainty regarding loading and system parameters leads to challenging optimization and robustness issues. Stochastic modeling combined with optimization theory ensures the optimum end-to-end performance of telecommunication or computer network systems. In view of the diverse design options possible, supporting models have many adjustable parameters and choosing the best set for a particular performance objective is delicate and time-consuming. An optimization based approach determines the optimal possible allocation for these parameters. Researchers and graduate students working at the interface of telecommunications and operations research will benefit from this book. Due to the practical approach, this book will also serve as a reference tool for scientists and engineers in telecommunication and computer networks who depend upon optimization.