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International Conference on Principles and Practice of Multi-Agent Systems

PRIMA 2018: PRIMA 2018: Principles and Practice of Multi-Agent Systems pp 158–174Cite as

An Anytime Algorithm for Simultaneous Coalition Structure Generation and Assignment

Part of the Lecture Notes in Computer Science book series (LNAI,volume 11224)

Abstract

A fundamental problem in artificial intelligence is how to organize and coordinate agents to improve their performance and skills. In this paper, we consider simultaneously generating coalitions of agents and assigning the coalitions to independent tasks, and present an anytime algorithm for the simultaneous coalition structure generation and assignment problem. This optimization problem has many real-world applications, including forming goal-oriented teams of agents. To evaluate the algorithm’s performance, we extend established methods for synthetic problem set generation, and benchmark the algorithm against CPLEX using randomized data sets of varying distribution and complexity. We also apply the algorithm to solve the problem of assigning agents to regions in a major commercial strategy game, and show that the algorithm can be utilized in game-playing to coordinate smaller sets of agents in real-time.

Keywords

  • Coalition structure generation
  • Assignment problem

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Acknowledgements

This work was partially supported by the Wallenberg AI, Autonomous Systems and Software Program (WASP) funded by the Knut and Alice Wallenberg Foundation.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Linköping University, 581 83, Linköping, Sweden

    Fredrik Präntare & Fredrik Heintz

Authors
  1. Fredrik Präntare
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  2. Fredrik Heintz
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Fredrik Präntare .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. School of Computing and Information Systems, University of Melbourne, Melbourne, Australia

    Tim Miller

  2. Department of Computer Science, University of Aberdeen, Aberdeen, UK

    Nir Oren

  3. Artificial Intelligence Research Center (AIRC), National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology (AIST), Tokyo, Japan

    Yuko Sakurai

  4. Artificial Intelligence Research Center (AIRC), National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology (AIST), Tsukuba, Japan

    Dr. Itsuki Noda

  5. University of Otago, Dunedin, New Zealand

    Bastin Tony Roy Savarimuthu

  6. Computer Science Department, New Mexico State University, Las Cruces, USA

    Tran Cao Son

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Präntare, F., Heintz, F. (2018). An Anytime Algorithm for Simultaneous Coalition Structure Generation and Assignment. In: Miller, T., Oren, N., Sakurai, Y., Noda, I., Savarimuthu, B., Cao Son, T. (eds) PRIMA 2018: Principles and Practice of Multi-Agent Systems. PRIMA 2018. Lecture Notes in Computer Science(), vol 11224. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-03098-8_10

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-03098-8_10

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