Efficient, Superstabilizing Decentralised Optimisation for Dynamic Task Allocation Environments

Macarthur, K., Farinelli, A., Ramchurn, S. and Jennings, N. (2010) Efficient, Superstabilizing Decentralised Optimisation for Dynamic Task Allocation Environments. In: Third International Workshop on: Optimisation in Multi-Agent Systems (OptMas) at the Ninth Joint Conference on Autonomous and Multi-Agent Systems, 10 May 2010, Toronto, Canada. pp. 25-32.

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Abstract

Decentralised optimisation is a key issue for multi-agent systems, and while many solution techniques have been developed, few provide support for dynamic environments, which change over time, such as disaster management. Given this, in this paper, we present Bounded Fast Max Sum (BFMS): a novel, dynamic, superstabilizing algorithm which provides a bounded approximate solution to certain classes of distributed constraint optimisation problems. We achieve this by eliminating dependencies in the constraint functions, according to how much impact they have on the overall solution value. In more detail, we propose iGHS, which computes a maximum spanning tree on subsections of the constraint graph, in order to reduce communication and computation overheads. Given this, we empirically evaluate BFMS, which shows that BFMS reduces communication and computation done by Bounded Max Sum by up to 99%, while obtaining 60-88% of the optimal utility.

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