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Coalition Formation with Spatial and Temporal Constraints

Coalition Formation with Spatial and Temporal Constraints
Coalition Formation with Spatial and Temporal Constraints
The coordination of emergency responders and robots to undertake a number of tasks in disaster scenarios is a grand challenge for multi-agent systems. Central to this endeavour is the problem of forming the best teams (coalitions) of responders to perform the various tasks in the area where the disaster has struck. Moreover, these teams may have to form, disband, and reform in different areas of the disaster region. This is because in most cases there will be more tasks than agents. Hence, agents need to schedule themselves to attempt each task in turn. Second, the tasks themselves can be very complex: requiring the agents to work on them for different lengths of time and having deadlines by when they need to be completed. The problem is complicated still further when different coalitions perform tasks with different levels of efficiency. Given all these facets, we define this as The Coalition Formation with Spatial and Temporal constraints problem (CFSTP).We show that this problem is NP-hard—in particular, it contains the wellknown complex combinatorial problem of Team Orienteering as a special case. Based on this, we design a Mixed Integer Program to optimally solve small-scale instances of the CFSTP and develop new anytime heuristics that can, on average, complete 97% of the tasks for large problems (20 agents and 300 tasks). In so doing, our solutions represent the first results for CFSTP.
Coalition Formation, RoboCup Rescue, Agents, Disaster Management, Multi-agent scheduling
1181-1188
Ramchurn, S. D.
1d62ae2a-a498-444e-912d-a6082d3aaea3
Polukarov, Mariya
bd2f0623-9e8a-465f-8b29-851387a64740
Farinelli, Alessandro
d2f26070-f403-4cae-b712-7097cb2e3fc6
Jennings, Nick
ab3d94cc-247c-4545-9d1e-65873d6cdb30
Trong, Cuong
e6691f71-c628-405b-83c7-b3c81ccf936e
Ramchurn, S. D.
1d62ae2a-a498-444e-912d-a6082d3aaea3
Polukarov, Mariya
bd2f0623-9e8a-465f-8b29-851387a64740
Farinelli, Alessandro
d2f26070-f403-4cae-b712-7097cb2e3fc6
Jennings, Nick
ab3d94cc-247c-4545-9d1e-65873d6cdb30
Trong, Cuong
e6691f71-c628-405b-83c7-b3c81ccf936e

Ramchurn, S. D., Polukarov, Mariya, Farinelli, Alessandro, Jennings, Nick and Trong, Cuong (2010) Coalition Formation with Spatial and Temporal Constraints. International Joint Conference on Autonomous Agents and Multi-Agent Systems (AAMAS 2010), Toronto, Canada. pp. 1181-1188 .

Record type: Conference or Workshop Item (Paper)

Abstract

The coordination of emergency responders and robots to undertake a number of tasks in disaster scenarios is a grand challenge for multi-agent systems. Central to this endeavour is the problem of forming the best teams (coalitions) of responders to perform the various tasks in the area where the disaster has struck. Moreover, these teams may have to form, disband, and reform in different areas of the disaster region. This is because in most cases there will be more tasks than agents. Hence, agents need to schedule themselves to attempt each task in turn. Second, the tasks themselves can be very complex: requiring the agents to work on them for different lengths of time and having deadlines by when they need to be completed. The problem is complicated still further when different coalitions perform tasks with different levels of efficiency. Given all these facets, we define this as The Coalition Formation with Spatial and Temporal constraints problem (CFSTP).We show that this problem is NP-hard—in particular, it contains the wellknown complex combinatorial problem of Team Orienteering as a special case. Based on this, we design a Mixed Integer Program to optimally solve small-scale instances of the CFSTP and develop new anytime heuristics that can, on average, complete 97% of the tasks for large problems (20 agents and 300 tasks). In so doing, our solutions represent the first results for CFSTP.

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AAMAS2010_0509_79a041c40.pdf - Accepted Manuscript
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More information

Submitted date: 14 March 2010
Published date: 2010
Additional Information: Event Dates: May 2010
Venue - Dates: International Joint Conference on Autonomous Agents and Multi-Agent Systems (AAMAS 2010), Toronto, Canada, 2010-05-01
Keywords: Coalition Formation, RoboCup Rescue, Agents, Disaster Management, Multi-agent scheduling
Organisations: Agents, Interactions & Complexity

Identifiers

Local EPrints ID: 268497
URI: http://eprints.soton.ac.uk/id/eprint/268497
PURE UUID: ea1791da-5765-450b-a253-01316f92bd62
ORCID for S. D. Ramchurn: ORCID iD orcid.org/0000-0001-9686-4302

Catalogue record

Date deposited: 11 Feb 2010 12:39
Last modified: 15 Mar 2024 03:22

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Contributors

Author: S. D. Ramchurn ORCID iD
Author: Mariya Polukarov
Author: Alessandro Farinelli
Author: Nick Jennings
Author: Cuong Trong

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