Anytime Optimal Coalition Structure Generation

A key problem when forming effective coalitions of autonomous agents is determining the best groupings, or the optimal coalition structure, to select to achieve some goal. To this end, we present a novel, anytime algorithm for this task that is significantly faster than current solutions. Specifically, we empirically show that we are able to find solutions that are optimal in 0.082% of the time taken by the state of the art dynamic programming algorithm (for 27 agents), using much less memory (O(2n ) instead of O(3n ) for n agents). Moreover, our algorithm is the first to be able to find solutions for more than 17 agents in reasonable time (less than 90 minutes for 27 agents, as opposed to around 2 months for the best previous solution).

• Type: Conference
• Year: 2007
• Where: AAAI
• Authors: Talal Rahwan, Sarvapali D. Ramchurn, Viet Dung Dang, Andrea Giovannucci, Nicholas R. Jennings
• Keywords: AAAI 2007, Autonomous Agents, Dynamic Programming Algorithm, Intelligent Agents, Optimal Coalition Structure