Asynchronous Teams (A-Teams) and the A-Teams Toolkit: An Agent-Based Problem-Solving Architecture and Software Framework

Abstract

This paper presents a biologically inspired architecture for problem solving called Asynchronous Teams (A-Teams) and a Toolkit for rapid assembly and prototyping of A-Teams. A-Teams are distributed, cooperative, and scale-efficient agent-networks. We define an "agent" as anything that can act, sense, and exert some control over its actions. A-Team agents are completely autonomous, that is, each agent has exclusive control over its actions. The strengths of A-Teams in problem solving arise from agent cooperation, agent distribution, and scale efficiency. Agent cooperation produces better results than can be achieved by individual agents, often leading to optimal results. A distributed architecture provides autonomy without resource constraints and control dependencies, and makes new agents relatively easy to add. Finally, scale efficiency means that the more agents that are added, the better the results in terms of solution quality and speed. The A-Teams Toolkit greatly facilitates the formation of A-Teams and provides a general software framework for distributed problem solving.