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Saunders, G. M. and Pollack, J. B. (1996) The Evolution of communication schemes over continuous channels. In Maes, P. and Mataric, M. and Meyer, J.-A. and Pollack, J. and Wilson, S. W., editors, SAB96. Cambridge MA: MIT Press.
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The Evolution of Communication Schemes
Over Continuous Channels
Gregory M. Saunders Jordan B. Pollack
The Institute for the Learning Sciences Computer Science Department
1890 Maple Street Volen Center for Complex Systems
Northwestern University Brandeis University
Evanston, IL 60201 Waltham, MA 02254
saunders@ils.nwu.edu pollack@cs.brandeis.edu
Abstract Many problems impede the design of multi­ agent systems, not the least of which is the passing of information between agents. While others hand implement communication routes and semantics, we explore a method by which communication can evolve. In the experiments described here, we model agents as connec­ tionist networks. We supply each agent with a number of communications channels imple­ mented by the addition of both input and out­ put units for each channel. The output units initiate environmental signals whose ampli­ tude decay over distance and are perturbed by environmental noise. An agent does not re­ ceive input from other individuals, rather the agent's input reflects the summation of all oth­ er agents' output signals along that channel. Because we use real­valued activations, the agents communicate using real­valued vectors. Under our evolutionary program, GNARL, the agents coevolve a communication scheme over continuous channels which conveys task­spe­ cific information.
1. INTRODUCTION Animals, both real and artificial must constantly inter­ act with others by competing for limited resources, by cooperating on a difficult task, or by communicating in­ formation about the environment. This paper focuses on communication; in particular, on the issue of how a set of agents can evolve a communication scheme to solve a given task without a priori native structure in place. In speaking about communication schemes, we wish to avoid the term ``language.'' A communication scheme describes the actual signals passed between agents. Language, a collection of sentences drawn from a finite vocabulary, denotes an ...
BibTex
@inproceedings{saunders96theEvolution,
  author={G. M. Saunders and J. B. Pollack},
  title={The Evolution of communication schemes over continuous channels},
  year={1996},
  address={Cambridge MA},
  editor={Maes, P. and Mataric, M. and Meyer, J.-A. and Pollack, J. and Wilson, S. W.},
  publisher={MIT Press},
  booktitle={SAB96},
  url={http://www.isrl.uiuc.edu/~amag/langev/paper/saunders96theEvolution.html}
}

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