Assignment problem in requirements driven agent collaboration and its implementation

Requirements Driven Agent Collaboration (RDAC) is a mechanism where the self-interested service agents actively and autonomously search for the required services submitted by the request agents and compete to offer the services. This mechanism would be more suitable for large number of autonomous service providers on internet compared with the current service-oriented computing framework. Collaboration is an important issue in this mechanism. This paper focuses on the collaboration issue in RDAC. First, we define the assignment problem in RDAC and show that it is NP-complete. Then, we model it as a Kripke structure with normative systems on it. This makes it possible to bridge the assignment problem and the existing efforts in normative systems, games, mechanisms, etc. Thirdly, a negotiation-based approach is given to solve the problem and the performance of the negotiation is evaluated by simulation. Finally, a tool for RDAC has been implemented to put it into practice and for furthe...

• Type: Conference
• Year: 2010
• Where: ATAL
• Authors: Jian Tang, Zhi Jin
• Keywords: Assignment Problem, ATAL 2010, Intelligent Agents, Normative Systems, Self-interested Service Agents