COALITION FORMATION WITH UNCERTAIN TASK EXECUTION

Hosam Hanna

2006

Abstract

We address the problem of coalition formation in environments where tasks’ executions are uncertain. Although previous works provide good solutions for coalition formation problem, the uncertain task execution problem is not taken into account. In environments where task execution is uncertain, an agent can’t be sure whether he will be able to execute all the subtasks that are allocated to him or he will ignore some of them. That is why forming coalition to maximize the real reward is an unrealizable operation. In this paper, we propose a theoretical approach to form coalition with uncertain task execution. We view the formation of a coalition to execute a task as (1) a decision to make and (2) as an uncertain source of gain. We associate then the allocation of a task to a coalition with an expected reward that represents what agents expect to gain by forming this coalition to execute this task. Also, the agents’ aim is to form coalition to maximize the expected reward instead of the real reward. To reach this objective, we formalize the coalition formation problem by a Markov Decision Process (MDP). We consider the situation where decisions are taken by one agent that develops and solves the corresponding MDP. An optimal coalition formation which maximizes the agents’ expected reward is then obtained.

Paper Citation

in Harvard Style

Hanna H. (2006). COALITION FORMATION WITH UNCERTAIN TASK EXECUTION . In Proceedings of the Eighth International Conference on Enterprise Information Systems - Volume 2: ICEIS, ISBN 978-972-8865-42-9, pages 164-169. DOI: 10.5220/0002459601640169

in Bibtex Style

@conference{iceis06,
author={Hosam Hanna},
title={COALITION FORMATION WITH UNCERTAIN TASK EXECUTION},
booktitle={Proceedings of the Eighth International Conference on Enterprise Information Systems - Volume 2: ICEIS,},
year={2006},
pages={164-169},
publisher={SciTePress},
organization={INSTICC},
doi={10.5220/0002459601640169},
isbn={978-972-8865-42-9},
}

in EndNote Style

TY - CONF
JO - Proceedings of the Eighth International Conference on Enterprise Information Systems - Volume 2: ICEIS,
TI - COALITION FORMATION WITH UNCERTAIN TASK EXECUTION
SN - 978-972-8865-42-9
AU - Hanna H.
PY - 2006
SP - 164
EP - 169
DO - 10.5220/0002459601640169