A study on the ephemeral nature of knowledge shared within multiagent systems

TL;DR

This paper introduces a behavior tree-based framework for knowledge sharing in multiagent systems, analyzing the ephemeral nature of acquired knowledge and its impact on collective intelligence.

Contribution

It proposes a novel behavior tree-based query-response mechanism for skill transfer and investigates the effects of memory duration on knowledge growth in multiagent systems.

Findings

Knowledge grows proportionally with remembrance duration.

Memory has minimal impact on overall knowledge growth.

Knowledge sharing can approximate pre-coded baseline performance.

Abstract

Achieving knowledge sharing within an artificial swarm system could lead to significant development in autonomous multiagent and robotic systems research and realize collective intelligence. However, this is difficult to achieve since there is no generic framework to transfer skills between agents other than a query-response-based approach. Moreover, natural living systems have a "forgetfulness" property for everything they learn. Analyzing such ephemeral nature (temporal memory properties of new knowledge gained) in artificial systems has never been studied in the literature. We propose a behavior tree-based framework to realize a query-response mechanism for transferring skills encoded as the condition-action control sub-flow of that portion of the knowledge between agents to fill this gap. We simulate a multiagent group with different initial knowledge on a foraging mission. While performing basic operations, each robot queries other robots to respond to an unknown condition. The responding robot shares the control actions by sharing a portion of the behavior tree that addresses the queries. Specifically, we investigate the ephemeral nature of the new knowledge gained through such a framework, where the knowledge gained by the agent is either limited due to memory or is forgotten over time. Our investigations show that knowledge grows proportionally with the duration of remembrance, which is trivial. However, we found minimal impact on knowledge growth due to memory. We compare these cases against a baseline that involved full knowledge pre-coded on all agents. We found that knowledge-sharing strived to match the baseline condition by sharing and achieving knowledge growth as a collective system.