In this section, we discuss the formal foundations
underlying the type of information exchange addressed in
CAST. In particular, we think it is important to specify,
under ideal conditions, what information should be
exchanged between whom, and at what time. The purpose
of information exchange must be oriented toward
improving the efficiency or performance of a team, but
otherwise is desired to be kept to a minimum to avoid the
cost of communications overhead (however this is defined
in the domain). In fact, a quantitative utility function that
incorporates such costs is actually used in STEAM
[Tambe, 1997] to help evaluate tradeoffs and decide when
to communicate within a team.