An improved dynamic programming algorithm for coalition structure generation

Rahwan, T. and Jennings, N. R. (2008) An improved dynamic programming algorithm for coalition structure generation. In: Proc 7th Int Conf on Autonomous Agents and Multi-Agent Systems, Estoril, Portugal. pp. 1417-1420.

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Abstract

Forming effective coalitions is a major research challenge in the field
of multi-agent systems. Central to this endeavour is the problem of
partitioning the set of agents into exhaustive and disjoint coalitions
so as to maximize social welfare. This coalition structure generation
problem is extremely challenging due to the exponential number
of partitions that need to be examined. Specifically, given n agents,
there are O(n^n) possible partitions. To date, the only algorithm that
can find an optimal solution in O(3^n) is the Dynamimc Programming
(DP) algorithm, due To Rothkopf et al. However, one of the main
limitations of DP is that it requires a significant amount of memory.
In this paper, we devise an Improved Dynamic Programming algorithm
(IDP) that is proven to perform fewer operations than DP (e.g.
38.7% of the operations given 25 agents), and is shown to use only
33.3% of the memory in the best case, and 66.6% in the worst.

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