  In most multiagent applications, communication is essential among agents to
coordinate their actions, and thus achieve their goal. However, communication
often has a related cost that affects overall system performance. In this
paper, we draw inspiration from studies of epistemic planning to develop a
communication model for agents that allows them to cooperate and make
communication decisions effectively within a planning task. The proposed model
treats a communication process as an action that modifies the epistemic state
of the team. In two simulated tasks, we evaluate whether agents can cooperate
effectively and achieve higher performance using communication protocol modeled
in our epistemic planning framework. Based on an empirical study conducted
using search and rescue tasks with different scenarios, our results show that
the proposed model improved team performance across all scenarios compared with
baseline models.
