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Using Social Dependence to Enable Neighbourly Behaviour in Open Multi-Agent Systems

Published:22 April 2019Publication History
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Abstract

Agents frequently collaborate to achieve a shared goal or to accomplish a task that they cannot do alone. However, collaboration is difficult in open multi-agent systems where agents share constrained resources to achieve both individual and shared goals. In current approaches to collaboration, agents are organised into disjoint groups and social reasoning is used to capture their capabilities when selecting a qualified set of collaborators. These approaches are not useful when agents are in multiple, overlapping groups; depend on each other when using shared resources; have multiple goals to achieve simultaneously; and have to share the overall costs and benefits. In this article, agents use social reasoning to enhance their understanding of other agents’ goals and their dependencies, and self-adaptive techniques to adapt their level of self-interest in a collaborative process, with a view to contributing to lowering shared costs or increasing shared benefits. This model aims at improving the extent to which agents’ goals are met while improving shared resource usage efficiency. For example, in a public transport system where each mode of transport has limited capacity, commuters will be enabled to make choices that avoid over-capacity in different modes, or in a smart energy grid with limited capacity, users can make choices as to when they increase their demand. The model simultaneously helps avoid overloading a shared resource while allowing users to achieve their own goals. The proposed model is evaluated in an open multi-agent system with 100 agents operating in multiple overlapping groups and sharing multiple constrained resources. The impact of agents’ varying levels of social dependencies, mobility, and their groups’ density on their individual and shared goal achievement is analysed.

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      cover image ACM Transactions on Intelligent Systems and Technology
      ACM Transactions on Intelligent Systems and Technology  Volume 10, Issue 3
      Survey Paper, Research Commentary and Regular Papers
      May 2019
      302 pages
      ISSN:2157-6904
      EISSN:2157-6912
      DOI:10.1145/3325195
      Issue’s Table of Contents

      Copyright © 2019 ACM

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      Publication History

      • Published: 22 April 2019
      • Accepted: 1 March 2019
      • Revised: 1 February 2019
      • Received: 1 July 2018
      Published in tist Volume 10, Issue 3

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