Skip to main content
Springer Nature Link
Log in

Forming Stable Coalitions in Large Systems with Self-interested Agents

  • Conference paper
  • First Online:
Multi-Agent Systems and Agreement Technologies (EUMAS 2016, AT 2016)

Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science ((LNAI,volume 10207))

  • 823 Accesses

Abstract

In coalition formation with self-interested agents both social welfare of the multi-agent system and stability of individual coalitions must be taken into account. However, in large-scale systems with thousands of agents, finding an optimal solution with respect to both metrics is infeasible.

In this paper we propose an approach for finding coalition structures with suboptimal social welfare and coalition stability in large-scale multi-agent systems. Our approach uses multi-agent simulation to model a dynamic coalition formation process. Agents increase coalition stability by deviating from unstable coalitions. Furthermore we present an approach for estimating coalition stability, which alleviates exponential complexity of coalition stability computation. This approach enables us to select a solution with high values of both social welfare and coalition stability.

We experimentally show that our approach causes a major increase in coalition stability compared to a baseline social welfare-maximizing algorithm, while maintaining a very small decrease in social welfare.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this chapter

Log in via an institution

Subscribe and save

Springer+ Basic
$34.99 /Month
  • Get 10 units per month
  • Download Article/Chapter or eBook
  • 1 Unit = 1 Article or 1 Chapter
  • Cancel anytime
Subscribe now

Buy Now

Chapter
USD 29.95
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever

Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout

Purchases are for personal use only

Institutional subscriptions

Similar content being viewed by others

Notes

  1. 1.

    In this example we assume that social welfare is equal to sum of coalition values, which are in turn calculated by summing up agents’ profits.

  2. 2.

    All permutations must be considered because the order in which agents join coalitions determines their profit.

  3. 3.

    Given the values of \(g_{norm}(CS)\) and \(stability_{\alpha }(CS)\) for each CS, Pareto optimal solutions can also easily be found.

  4. 4.

    Random runs are necessary because agents make decisions in random order.

References

  1. Anshelevich, E., Sekar, S.: Computing stable coalitions: approximation algorithms for reward sharing. In: Markakis, E., Schäfer, G. (eds.) WINE 2015. LNCS, vol. 9470, pp. 31–45. Springer, Heidelberg (2015). doi:10.1007/978-3-662-48995-6_3

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  2. Arnold, T., Schwalbe, U.: Dynamic coalition formation and the core. J. Econ. Behav. Organ. 49, 363–380 (2002)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  3. Augustine, J., Chen, N., Elkind, E., Fanelli, A., Gravin, N., Shiryaev, D.: Dynamics of profit-sharing games. In: 21st International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence, IJCAI 2011 (2011)

    Google Scholar 

  4. Bistaffa, F., Farinelli, A.: A fast approach to form core-stable coalitions based on a dynamic model. In: 2013 IEEE/WIC/ACM International Conference on Intelligent Agent Technology, IAT 2013 (2013)

    Google Scholar 

  5. Cruz-Mencía, F., Cerquides, J., Espinosa, A.: Optimizing performance for coalition structure generation problems’ IDP algorithm. In: International Conference on Parallel and Distributed Processing Techniques and Applications (2013)

    Google Scholar 

  6. Farinelli, A., Bicego, M., Ramchurn, S., Zucchelli, M.: C-link: a hierarchical clustering approach to large-scale near-optimal coalition formation. In: 23rd International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence (2013)

    Google Scholar 

  7. Greco, G., Malizia, E., Palopoli, L., Scarcello, F.: On the complexity of the core over coalition structures. In: 22nd International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence (2011)

    Google Scholar 

  8. Janovsky, P., DeLoach, S.A.: Multi-agent simulation framework for large-scale coalition formation. In: 2016 IEEE/WIC/ACM International Conference on Web Intelligence (2016)

    Google Scholar 

  9. Kraus, S., Shehory, O., Taase, G.: Coalition formation with uncertain heterogeneous information. In: Proceedings of the 2nd International Joint Conference on Autonomous Agents and Multiagent Systems (2003)

    Google Scholar 

  10. Lerman, K., Shehory, O.: Coalition formation for large-scale electronic markets. In: 4th International Conference on MultiAgent Systems (2000)

    Google Scholar 

  11. Lichman, M.: UCI machine learning repository (2013). https://archive.ics.uci.edu/ml/datasets/ElectricityLoadDiagrams20112014

  12. World Trade Organization (n.d.). http://stat.wto.org/StatisticalProgram/WSDBStatProgramSeries.aspx. Accessed 03 Mar 2016

  13. Merida-Campos, C., Willmott, S.: Modelling coalition formation over time for iterative coalition games. In: 3rd International Joint Conference on Autonomous Agents and Multiagent Systems, AAMAS 2004 (2004)

    Google Scholar 

  14. Pycia, M.: Stability and preference alignment in matching and coalition formation. Econometrica 80, 323–362 (2012)

    Article  MathSciNet  MATH  Google Scholar 

  15. Rahwan, T., Jennings, N.R.: An improved dynamic programming algorithm for coalition structure generation. In: 7th International Conference on Autonomous Agents and Multiagent Systems (2008)

    Google Scholar 

  16. Rahwan, T., Michalak, T.P., Wooldridge, M., Jennings, N.R.: Coalition structure generation: a survey. Artif. Intell. 229, 139–174 (2015)

    Article  MathSciNet  MATH  Google Scholar 

  17. Sandholm, T., Larson, K., Andersson, M., Shehory, O., Tohmé, F.: Coalition structure generation with worst case guarantees. Artif. Intell. 111, 209–238 (1999)

    Article  MathSciNet  MATH  Google Scholar 

  18. Sandholm, T.W., Lesser, V.R.: Coalitions among computationally bounded agents. Artif. Intell. 94, 99–137 (1997)

    Article  MathSciNet  MATH  Google Scholar 

  19. Shehory, O., Kraus, S.: Feasible formation of coalitions among autonomous agents in nonsuperadditive environments. Comput. Intell. 15, 218–251 (1999)

    Article  MathSciNet  Google Scholar 

  20. Vinyals, M., Bistaffa, F., Farinelli, A., Rogers, A.: Coalitional energy purchasing in the smart grid. In: 2012 IEEE International Energy Conference and Exhibition, ENERGYCON 2012 (2012)

    Google Scholar 

  21. Yamamoto, J., Sycara, K.: A stable and efficient buyer coalition formation scheme for e-marketplaces. In: Proceedings of the 5th International Conference on Autonomous Agents, AGENTS 2001 (2001)

    Google Scholar 

  22. Yun Yeh, D.: A dynamic programming approach to the complete set partitioning problem. BIT Numer. Math. 26, 467–474 (1986)

    Article  MathSciNet  MATH  Google Scholar 

Download references

Acknowledgements

This work was supported by the US National Science Foundation via Award No. CNS-1544705.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Computer Science, Kansas State University, Manhattan, KS, 66506, USA

    Pavel Janovsky & Scott A. DeLoach

Authors
  1. Pavel Janovsky
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  2. Scott A. DeLoach
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Pavel Janovsky .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. King’s College London, London, United Kingdom

    Natalia Criado Pacheco

  2. Polytechnic University of Valencia, Valencia, Portugal

    Carlos Carrascosa

  3. Artificial Intelligence Research Institute (IIIA-CSIC), Barcelona, Spain

    Nardine Osman

  4. Polytechnic University of Valencia, Valencia, Spain

    Vicente Julián Inglada

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

Copyright information

© 2017 Springer International Publishing AG

About this paper

Cite this paper

Janovsky, P., DeLoach, S.A. (2017). Forming Stable Coalitions in Large Systems with Self-interested Agents. In: Criado Pacheco, N., Carrascosa, C., Osman, N., Julián Inglada, V. (eds) Multi-Agent Systems and Agreement Technologies. EUMAS AT 2016 2016. Lecture Notes in Computer Science(), vol 10207. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-59294-7_10

Download citation

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-59294-7_10

  • Published:

  • Publisher Name: Springer, Cham

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-319-59293-0

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-319-59294-7

  • eBook Packages: Computer ScienceComputer Science (R0)

Publish with us

Policies and ethics

Search

Navigation