Who Works Together in Agent Coalition Formation?

Coalitions are often required for multi-agent collaboration. In this research, we consider tasks that can only be completed with the combined efforts of multiple agents using approaches which are both cooperative and competitive. Often agents forming coalitions determine optimal coalitions by looking at all possibilities. This requires an exponential algorithm and is not feasible when the number of agents and tasks is large. We propose agents use a two step process of first determining the task, and secondly, the agents that will be solicited to help complete the task. We describe polynomial time heuristics for each decision. We measure four different agent types using the described heuristics. We explore diminishing choices and performance under various parameters.

• Type: Conference
• Year: 2007
• Where: CIA
• Authors: Vicki H. Allan, Kevin Westwood
• Keywords: Agents Forming Coalitions, Artificial Intelligence, CIA 2007, Multiple Agents, Optimal Coalitions