Performance and attention in multiagent object search team

A well-designed cooperation strategy for a task oriented multiagent team is important as it can improve performance. A challenging research issue in cooperation concerns the extent to which an agent should pay attention to the actions and effects of other agents. In this paper, we address this issue in the context of an object search team. We first propose the concept of an activity window which captures an agent's view of the activities and effects of the team. Then we pinpoint some criteria that can be used to determine whether it is beneficial for an agent to put an action of the team into its window. Finally, we present experimental results to test these criteria.