Section 8.5 Glossary
- Multi-Agent System (MAS)
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Multiple autonomous robots (agents) that interact, coordinate, and share tasks to achieve individual or collective goals.
- Centralized Architecture
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A control scheme where a single master computer collects data from every robot, computes all decisions, and sends back movement commands.
- Decentralized (Distributed) Architecture
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A control scheme where each robot runs its own decision-making logic locally, based on local sensor data and short-range messages from neighboring peers.
- Swarm Robotics
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A subfield of decentralized multi-robot systems inspired by biological collective behaviors such as ant colonies, bird flocks, and fish schools.
- Emergent Behavior
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Complex, highly organized group patterns that arise from many individual agents following simple, local interaction rules without top-down coordination.
- Reynolds’ Rules (Boids Model)
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Three simple local rules—Separation (avoid crowding neighbors), Alignment (match neighbor heading), and Cohesion (steer toward neighbor center of mass)—that together generate realistic flocking behavior.
- Stigmergy
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Indirect communication where agents modify the environment, such as a pheromone trail or a shared map marker, to influence the future behavior of other agents.
- Multi-Robot Task Allocation (MRTA)
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The problem of deciding which robot in a fleet should perform which task.
- Market-Based (Auction) Protocol
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A decentralized task allocation method where a task is announced to the fleet, each available robot submits a cost bid, and the lowest-cost bidder is awarded the task.
- Priority Rules
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Coordination rules, such as fixed priority for time-sensitive tasks or first-come-first-served intersection reservations, that prevent robots sharing the same space from colliding.
- Classification Confidence
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A measure of how certain a vision system is about an assigned category label for a detected object.
- Routing Logic
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Decision rules that map a classified item to a destination, such as a specific sorting bin.
- Holding Zone
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A fallback location for items that cannot be classified with sufficient confidence to sort directly.
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