Reasoning About Commitments and Penalties for Coordination Between Autonomous Agents
Reasoning About Commitments and Penalties for Coordination Between Autonomous Agents
This paper develops and evaluates a new decision theoretic framework in which autonomous agents can make rational choices about coordinating their actions. The framework covers the decisions that are involved in determining when and how to coordinate, when to respond to requests for coordination and when it is profitable to drop contracts in order to exploit better opportunities. Our motivating hypothesis is that enabling agents to dynamically set and re-assess both their degree of commitment to one another and the sanctions for decommitment according to their prevailing circumstances will make coordination more effective. This hypothesis is evaluated, empirically, in a grid-world scenario, taking into account three levels of commitments (total, partial and loose) and three kinds of sanctions (fixed, partially sanctioned and sunk cost).
131-138
Excelente-Toledo, C. B.
3e8f210d-7ee3-4c1f-8148-6f392ad9f77b
Bourne, R. A.
c1003f5b-cb86-42a1-9fd1-986a6ab68aa8
Jennings, N. R.
ab3d94cc-247c-4545-9d1e-65873d6cdb30
2001
Excelente-Toledo, C. B.
3e8f210d-7ee3-4c1f-8148-6f392ad9f77b
Bourne, R. A.
c1003f5b-cb86-42a1-9fd1-986a6ab68aa8
Jennings, N. R.
ab3d94cc-247c-4545-9d1e-65873d6cdb30
Excelente-Toledo, C. B., Bourne, R. A. and Jennings, N. R.
(2001)
Reasoning About Commitments and Penalties for Coordination Between Autonomous Agents.
5th International Conference on Autonomous Agents (Agents 2001), Montreal, Canada.
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Record type:
Conference or Workshop Item
(Paper)
Abstract
This paper develops and evaluates a new decision theoretic framework in which autonomous agents can make rational choices about coordinating their actions. The framework covers the decisions that are involved in determining when and how to coordinate, when to respond to requests for coordination and when it is profitable to drop contracts in order to exploit better opportunities. Our motivating hypothesis is that enabling agents to dynamically set and re-assess both their degree of commitment to one another and the sanctions for decommitment according to their prevailing circumstances will make coordination more effective. This hypothesis is evaluated, empirically, in a grid-world scenario, taking into account three levels of commitments (total, partial and loose) and three kinds of sanctions (fixed, partially sanctioned and sunk cost).
More information
Published date: 2001
Venue - Dates:
5th International Conference on Autonomous Agents (Agents 2001), Montreal, Canada, 2001-01-01
Organisations:
Agents, Interactions & Complexity
Identifiers
Local EPrints ID: 254233
URI: http://eprints.soton.ac.uk/id/eprint/254233
PURE UUID: 2c2abe31-47ce-47d4-858c-5346a389525b
Catalogue record
Date deposited: 01 Nov 2002
Last modified: 14 Mar 2024 05:31
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Contributors
Author:
C. B. Excelente-Toledo
Author:
R. A. Bourne
Author:
N. R. Jennings
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