Team Formation by Self-Interested Mobile Agents

Abstract

AbstractA process of team formation by autonomous agents in a distributed environment is presented. Since the environment is distributed, there are serious problems with communication and consistent decision making inside a team. To deal with these problems, the standard technique of token passing in a computer network is applied. The passing cycle of the token serves as the communication route. It assures consistent decision making inside the team maintaining its organizational integrity. On the other hand it constitutes a component of the plan of the cooperative work performed by a complete team. Two algorithms for team formation are given. The first one is based on simple self-interested agents that still can be viewed as reactive agents (see [14]) although augmented with knowledge, goal, and cooperation mechanisms. The second one is based on sophisticated self-interested agents. Moreover, the algorithm based on fully cooperative agents, which is an adaptation of the static routing algorithm in computer networks, is constructed in order to compare its performance with performances of the team formation algorithms.KeywordsTeam formationcooperation mechanismsautonomous agentdistributed computer networks