Optimal Coalition Structure Generation In Partition Function Games

1 In multi-agent systems (MAS), coalition formation is typically studied using characteristic function game (CFG) representations, where the performance of any coalition is independent from co-existing coalitions in the system. However, in a number of environments, there are significant externalities from coalition formation where the effectiveness of one coalition may be affected by the formation of other distinct coalitions. In such cases, coalition formation can be modeled using partition function game (PFG) representations. In PFGs, to accurately generate an optimal division of agents into coalitions (so called CSG problem), one would have to search through the entire search space of coalition structures since, in a general case, one cannot predict the values of the coalitions affected by the externalities a priori. In this paper we consider four distinct PFG settings and prove that in such environments one can bound the values of every coalition. From this insight, which bridges t...

• Type: Conference
• Year: 2008
• Where: ECAI
• Authors: Tomasz P. Michalak, Andrew Dowell, Peter McBurney, Michael Wooldridge
• Keywords: Artificial Intelligence, Coalition Formation, Coalitions, ECAI 2008, Function Game