Abstract
Incorporating coalition formation algorithms into agent systems shall be advantageous due to the consequent increase in the overall quality of task performance. Coalition formation was addressed in game theory, however the game theoretic approach is centralized and computationally intractable. Recent work in DAI has resulted in distributed algorithms with computational tractability. This paper addresses the implementation of distributed coalition formation algorithms within a real-world multi-agent system. We present the problems that arise when attempting to utilize the theoretical coalition formation algorithms for a real-world system, demonstrate how some of their restrictive assumptions can be relaxed, and discuss the resulting benefits. In addition, we analyze the modifications, the complexity and the quality of the cooperation mechanisms. The task domain of our multi-agent system is information gathering, filtering and decision support within the WWW.
This material is based upon work supported in part by ARPA Grant #F33615-93-1-1330, by ONR Grant #N00014-96-1-1222, and by NSF Grant #IRI-9508191.
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Shehory, O.M., Sycara, K., Jha, S. (1998). Multi-agent coordination through coalition formation. In: Singh, M.P., Rao, A., Wooldridge, M.J. (eds) Intelligent Agents IV Agent Theories, Architectures, and Languages. ATAL 1997. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 1365. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/BFb0026756
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BFb0026756
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