Abstract

We present congregating both as a metaphor for describing and modeling multiagent systems (MAS) and as a means for reducing coordination costs. We compare congregations to other models of multiagent behavior, namely teams and coalitions. We present a formal model of a congregation and then apply Vidal and Durfee's CLRI framework [21] to determine the aspects of a congregating problem that mae it difficult. We discuss how agents that are able to advertise congregations using labels can reduce coordination cost, and show how such agents can exploit structure within labels to further reduce search cost.

Citations