COOPERATING AIR TRAFFIC CONTROL AGENTS

The key aim of cooperating air traffic control agents (CAT CA) was to comparatively analyze and evaluate the success of a multiagent system (MAS) and a single agent system (SAS) at addressing a given set of goals in a problem domain amenable to the utilization of either a MAS or SAS. The problem domain selected was air traffic control (AT C). The success of the MAS and SAS was evaluated in accordance with a set of objective criteria. The results attained support a hypothesis that the MAS is successful at addressing the given set of goals for simulation scenarios utilizing a large number of aircraft, and the SAS is successful at addressing the sameset of goals in simulation scenarios utilizing a small number of aircraft. The term success is defined as the number of cases within a given simulation scenario, where an agent detects and resolves potential air traffic conflicts, and directs aircraft adhering to expected aircraft flight times. The results attained are applicable in problem domains other than AT C, such as intelligent hospital scheduling (Decker, 1996), and road traffic congestion and traffic jam simulation (Cremer, et al., 1994).