Experiments in Selective Overhearing of Hierarchical Organizations

Abstract. Lately, overhearing has gained interest in monitoring multi-agent settings. Previous investigations provided an extensive set of techniques using overhearing. However, most previous investigations rely on a problematic assumption that all inter-agent communications can be overheard. In the real-world settings, it is reasonable to assume that the available overhearing resources will be essentially limited. Thus, overhearing targets should be carefully chosen. We provide a theoretical and empirical study of selective overhearing. In particular, we focus on overhearing hierarchical organizations that are highly popular in the real-world settings. This paper first presents a theoretical approach for modelling overhearing in hierarchical organizations . Then, based on the proposed model, we present experiments in simulating conversations in hierarchical organizations, and empirically examine a set of overhearing strategies particularly suited for such organizations. Based on thes...

• Type: Conference
• Year: 2006
• Where: ACOM
• Authors: Gery Gutnik, Gal A. Kaminka
• Keywords: ACOM 2006, Computational Linguistics, Hierarchical Organizations, Multi-agent Settings, Real-world Settings