Blum, J. and Eskandarian, A. (2002) "Enhancing Intelligent Agent Collaboration for Flow Optimization of Railroad Traffic", Transportation Research Part A, 36(10), pp. 919-930.

Abstract: Intelligent agents have successfully solved the train pathing problem on a small portion of railroad network. As the railroad network grows, it is imperative that the agents collaborate to operate as efficiently as possible. In this paper, the authors demonstrate a collaboration protocol based on a conditional measure of agent effectiveness. Because agent effectiveness is not directly measurable, a suitable metric for agent effectiveness is introduced. Where typically agents run with uniform frequency, the collaboration protocol schedules the agents with a frequency proportional to their expected effectiveness. This protocol introduced a 10-fold improvement in the agent efficiency when tested with a simulation program on a portion of the Burlington Northern railroad.