Coalition formation: Towards feasible solutions abstract of a key-note speech

Abstract

Coalition formation is an important cooperation method in multi-agent systems. Within coalitions, agents may be able to jointly perform tasks that they would otherwise be unable to perform, or will perform poorly. To allow agents to form coalitions, one should devise a coalition formation mechanism that includes a protocol as well as strategies to be implemented by the agents given the protocol. Coalition formation mechanisms proposed to date commonly provide these, however they include several restrictive assumptions, which do not hold in real-world domains where coalitions are necessary. In recent studies we have relaxed some of these assumptions to arrive at automated coalition formation mechanisms better suited for real domains.