The Distributed Vehicle Monitoring Testbed: A Tool for Investigating Distributed Problem Solving Networks

Cooperative distributed problem solving networks are distributed networks of semi-autonomous processing nodes that work together to solve a single problem. The Distributed Vehicle Monitoring Testbed is a flexible and fully-instrumented research tool for empirically evaluating alternative designs for these networks. The testbed simulates a class of a distributed knowledge-based problem solving systems operating on an abstracted version of a vehicle monitoring task. it implements a novel generic architecture for distributed problems solving networks that exploits the use of sophisticated local node control and meta-level control to improve global coherence in network problem solving; (2.)