Common Contracts

Reaching diagnostic agreement in Multi-Agent Diagnosis

October 31st, 2004

• Filed
  October 31st, 2004

We consider the problem of finding a commonly agreed upon diagnosis for errors observed in a system monitored by a number of different expert agents. Each agent is as- sumed to have its own specialized (expert) view on the sys- tem and collectively, the agents have to agree on one or more diagnoses based on their views. Reaching an agree- ment is complicated by the two factors: (i) different spe- cialisms need not distinguish the same fault modes of a com- ponent and (ii) knowledge of different specialisms need not be correct in some cases. This paper analyzes these prob- lems and presents protocols that enable the agents to deal with these issues.