Multiagent Resource Allocation with K -additive Utility Functions

Yann Chevaleyre (1) , Ulle Endriss (2) , Sylvia Estivie (1) , Nicolas Maudet (1)

1 LAMSADE - Laboratoire d'analyse et modélisation de systèmes pour l'aide à la décision
2 Department of Computing [London]

We briefly review previous work on the welfare engineering framework where autonomous software agents negotiate on the allocation of a number of discrete resources, and point out connections to combinatorial optimisation problems, including combinatorial auctions, that shed light on the computational complexity of the framework. We give particular consideration to scenarios where the preferences of agents are modelled in terms of k-additive utility functions, i.e. scenarios where synergies between different resources are restricted to bundles of at most k items.

Mots clés: negotiation; representation of utility functions; social welfare; combinatorial optimisation; bidding languages for combinatorial auctions

Yann Chevaleyre, Ulle Endriss, Sylvia Estivie, Nicolas Maudet. Multiagent Resource Allocation with K -additive Utility Functions. pp.18, 2004. ⟨hal-00018263⟩