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Summary: M. Klusch et al. (Eds.): CIA 2007, LNAI 4676, pp. 241254, 2007.
© Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2007
Who Works Together in Agent Coalition
Formation?
Vicki H. Allan and Kevin Westwood
Utah State University, Logan, Utah 84332-4205
vicki.Allan@usu.edu, kevwestwood@cc.usu.edu
Abstract. 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.
Keywords: Coalition Formation, Multiagent Systems, Coordination and
Collaboration.
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