Dynamic role assignment for multi-agent cooperation

In this paper, we introduce a dynamic role assignment mechanism for a team of cooperative virtual agents working in interactive computer games. This role assignment mechanism is a new one different from both existing static and dynamic mechanisms, in which decisions regarding role assignment are made all at once either in the design phase or in the execution phase. According to our mechanism, all situation-dependent role sets are predefined in the design phase. Detail decisions regarding which member agent has to take what specific role, however, are made in the execution phase. This mechanism can minimize the negotiation effort for role assignment in the execution phase. Therefore, this mechanism is quite effective in real-time multi-agent environments like interactive computer games. Through experiments, we show the superiority of our dynamic role assignment mechanism.