Skip to main content
SpringerLink
Log in

Constant factor approximation algorithms for coalition structure generation

  • Published:
Autonomous Agents and Multi-Agent Systems Aims and scope Submit manuscript

Abstract

Coalition structure generation is a central problem in characteristic function games. Most algorithmic work to date can be classified into one of three broad categories: anytime algorithms, design-to-time algorithms and heuristic algorithms [5]. This paper focuses on the former two approaches. Both design-to-time and anytime algorithms have pros and cons. While design-to-time algorithms guarantee finding an optimal solution, they must be run to completion in order to generate any solution. Anytime algorithms; however, permit premature termination while providing solutions of ever increasing quality along with quality guarantees. Design-to-time algorithms have a better worst case runtime (O(3n) for n agents) compared to the current anytime algorithms (O(n n) for n agents), but do not provide the flexibility of anytime algorithms. In this paper we present the first design-to-time constant factor approximation algorithms for coalition structure generation that guarantee high quality solutions quickly. We show how our approach can be used as an anytime algorithm, which combines both the worst case runtime of the design-to-time algorithms and the flexibility of the anytime algorithms. This results in the first anytime algorithm for coalition structure generation which has the same worst case time complexity of the current best design-to-time algorithms.

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

Access this article

Log in via an institution

Price excludes VAT (USA)
Tax calculation will be finalised during checkout.

Instant access to the full article PDF.

Institutional subscriptions

Similar content being viewed by others

References

  1. Abdallah, S., & Lesser, V. (2004). Organization-based cooperative coalition formation. In Proceedings of the IEEE/WIC/ACM international conference on intelligent agent techonology, IAT, pp. 162–168.

  2. Dang, V., & Jennings, N. (2004). Generating coalition structures with finite bound from the optimal guarantees. In Proceedings of the third international joint conference on autonomous agents and multiagent systems, pp. 564–571.

  3. Larson K., Sandholm T. (2000) Anytime coalition structure generation: an average case study. Journal of Experimental and Theoretical AI 12: 40–47

    Google Scholar 

  4. Ohta, N., Conitzer, V., Ichimura, R., Sakurai, Y., Iwasaki, A., & Yokoo, M. (2009). Coalition structure generation utilizing compact characteristic function representations. In Fifteenth international conference on principles and practice of constraint programming (CP-09), pp. 623–638.

  5. Rahwan, T., & Jennings, N. (2008). Coalition structure generation: dynamic programming meets anytime optimisation. In Proceedings of the 23rd conference on AI (AAAI), pp. 156–161.

  6. Rahwan, T., & Jennings, N. (2008). An improved dyanmic programming algorithm for coalition structure generation. In Proceedings of the 7th international conference on autonomous agents and multi-agent systems.

  7. Rahwan, T., Ramchurn, S., Dang, V., Giovannucci, A., & Jennings, N. (2007). Anytime optimal coalition structure generation. In Proceedings of the 22nd conference on artificial intelligence (AAAI), pp. 1184–1190.

  8. Rahwan, T., Ramchurn, S., Dang, V., & Jennings, N. (2007). Near-optimal anytime coalition structure generation. In Proceedings of the 20th international joint conference on artificial intelligence (IJCAI), pp. 2365–2371.

  9. Rahwan T., Ramchurn S., Jennings N., Giovannucci A. (2009) An anytime algorithm for optimal coalition structure generation. Journal of Artificial Intelligence Research 34: 521–567

    MATH  MathSciNet  Google Scholar 

  10. Rothkopf M., Pekec A., Harstad R. (1998) Computationally manageable combinational auctions. Management Science 44(8): 1131–1147

    Article  MATH  Google Scholar 

  11. Sandholm T., Larson K., Anderson M., Shehory O., Tohmé F. (1999) Coalition structure generation with worst case guarantees. Artificial Intelligence 111(1-2): 209–238

    Article  MATH  MathSciNet  Google Scholar 

  12. Shehory O., Kraus S. (1998) Methods for task allocation via agent coalition formation. Artificial Intelligence 101(1-2): 165–200

    Article  MATH  MathSciNet  Google Scholar 

  13. Tosić P., Agha G. (2005) Maximal clique based distributed coalition formation for task allocation in large-scale multi-agent systems. Massively Multi-Agent Systems I 3446: 104–120

    Article  Google Scholar 

  14. Yeh Y. (1986) A dynamic programming approach to the complete set partitioning problem. BIT Numerical Mathematics 26(4): 467–474

    Article  MATH  Google Scholar 

Download references

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Vanderbilt University, 357 Jacobs Hall, 2201 West End, Nashville, TN, 37240, USA

    Travis C. Service

  2. Vanderbilt University, 359 Jacobs Hall, 2201 West End, Nashville, TN, 37235-1824, USA

    Julie A. Adams

Authors
  1. Travis C. Service
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  2. Julie A. Adams
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Travis C. Service.

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Cite this article

Service, T.C., Adams, J.A. Constant factor approximation algorithms for coalition structure generation. Auton Agent Multi-Agent Syst 23, 1–17 (2011). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10458-010-9124-7

Download citation

  • Published:

  • Issue Date:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10458-010-9124-7

Keywords

Search

Navigation