Preferences and Constraints for Agent Coalition Formation

In this paper, we tackle the problem of coalition formation in multi-agent systems. We detail a new coalition formation model that uses the constraints of the agents to guide their search for coalitions and to derive their preferences in order to facilitate their negotiations. Our work focuses especially on agents which are self-interested and want to cooperate in executing actions in their plans. We propose a general framework for the coalition formation in which the constraints are used to form suitable coalitions. We describe a procedure that transforms such constraints into a structured input which is used by the agents during their negotiations. Then, we present the method which enables the agents to select the partners that are most likely to be interested in sharing their actions. We detail this method and provide the results of its experimental evaluation.