Satisficing coalition formation among agents

In a multiagent system where each agent has only an incomplete view of the world, optimal coalition formation is difficult. Coupling that with real-time and resource constraints often makes the rationalization process infeasible or costly. We propose a coalition formation approach that identifies and builds sub-optimal yet satisficing coalitions among agents to solve a problem detected in the environment. All agents are peers and autonomous. Each is motivated to conserve its own resources while cooperating with other agents to achieve a global task or resource allocation goal. The (initiating) agent-that detects a problem-hastily forms an initial coalition by selecting neighboring agents that it considers to have high potential utilities, based on the capability of each neighbor and its respective inter-agent relationships. The initiating agent next finalizes the coalition via multiple concurrent 1-to-1 negotiations with only neighbors of high potential utility, during which constraints and commitments are exchanged in an argumentation setting.