Towards a Formalization of Multi-Agent Based Fault Diagnosis of Complex Dynamic Systems

摘要

We aim, in this paper, to make a first step towards formalizing multi-agent diagnosis. We present a general framework for Multi-Agent System that is suitable for cooperative diagnosis. We discuss the theories of the communicating agents, their reasoning capabilities, their communicative needs and the types of dialogue needed. The logic, which we employ, is a temporal three-valued based logic for reasoning with incomplete information augmented with events (Extended TFONL). The logic allows us to represent and reason with different types of knowledge such as structural, behavioral, causal, qualitative and heuristic. The framework allows for multiple perspectives on the same fault. It can deal with dynamic change in the external environment and gives more explicit recognition to reasoning and interpretation. It also allows us to provide more accurate diagnosis for the same fault. This can be achieved by allowing different agents/models (e.g, qualitative and quantitative) where each can used to perform a diagnosis of the same fault(s).