An agent-based approach to solve dynamic meeting scheduling problems with preferences

Multi-agent systems are widely used to address large-scale distributed combinatorial applications in the real world. One such application is meeting scheduling (MS), which is defined by a variety of features. The MS problem is naturally distributed and especially subject to many alterations. In addition, this problem is characterized by the presence of users’ preferences that turn it into a search for an optimal rather than a feasible solution. However, in real-world applications users usually have conflicting preferences, which makes the solving process an NP-hard problem. Most research efforts in the literature, adopting agent-based technologies, tackle the MS problem as a static problem. They often share some common properties: allowing the relaxation of any user’s time restriction, not dealing with achieving any level of consistency among meetings to enhance the efficiency of the solving process, not tackling the consequences of the dynamic environment, and especially not a...

• Type: Journal
• Year: 2007
• Where: EAAI
• Authors: Ahlem Ben Hassine, Tu Bao Ho
• Keywords: EAAI 2007, Meeting Scheduling, Ms Problems, Real-world Applications Users