NDLI: Coalition formation for task allocation: theory and algorithms

Content Provider	Springer Nature Link
Author	Service, Travis C. Adams, Julie A.
Copyright Year	2010
Abstract	This paper focuses on coalition formation for task allocation in both multi-agent and multi-robot domains. Two different problem formalizations are considered, one for multi-agent domains where agent resources are transferable and one for multi-robot domains. We demonstrate complexity theoretic differences between both models and show that, under both, the coalition formation problem, with m tasks, is NP-hard to both solve exactly and to approximate within a factor of $${O(m^{1-\epsilon})}$$ for all $${\epsilon > 0}$$ . Two natural restrictions of the coalition formation problem are considered. In the first situation agents are drawn from a set of j types. Agents of each type are indistinguishable from one another. For this situation a dynamic programming based approach is presented, which, for fixed j finds the optimal coalition structure in polynomial time and is applicable in both multi-agent and multi-robot domains. We then consider situations where coalitions are restricted to k or fewer agents. We present two different algorithms. Each guarantees the generated solution to be within a constant factor, for fixed k, of the optimal in terms of utility. Our algorithms complement Shehory and Kraus’ algorithm (Artif Intell 101(1–2):165–200, 1998), which provides guarantee’s on solution cost, as ours provides guarantees on utility. Our algorithm for general multi-agent domains is a modification of and has the same running time as Shehory and Kraus’ algorithm, while our approach for multi-robot domains runs in time $${O(n^{\frac{3}{2}}m)}$$ , much faster than Vig and Adams (J Intell Robot Syst 50(1):85–118, 2007) modifications to Shehory and Kraus’ algorithm for multi-robot domains, which ran in time O(n k m), for n agents and m tasks.
Starting Page	225
Ending Page	248
Page Count	24
File Format	PDF
ISSN	13872532
Journal	Autonomous Agents and Multi-Agent Systems
Volume Number	22
Issue Number	2
e-ISSN	15737454
Language	English
Publisher	Springer US
Publisher Date	2010-02-24
Publisher Place	Boston
Access Restriction	One Nation One Subscription (ONOS)
Subject Keyword	Coalition formation Task allocation Multi-robot User Interfaces and Human Computer Interaction Software Engineering/Programming and Operating Systems Computing Methodologies Computer Systems Organization and Communication Networks Artificial Intelligence (incl. Robotics)
Content Type	Text
Resource Type	Article
Subject	Artificial Intelligence

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