Escaping local optima in multi-agent oriented constraint satisfaction.

Basharu, Muhammed; Ahriz, Hatem; Arana, In�s

Abstract

We present a multi-agent approach to constraint satisfaction where feedback and reinforcement are used in order to avoid local optima and, consequently, to improve the overall solution. Our approach, FeReRA, is based on the fact that an agents local best performance does not necessarily contribute to the systems best performance. Thus, agents may be rewarded for improving the systems performance and penalised for not contributing towards a better solution. Hence, agents may be forced to choose sub-optimal moves when they reach a specified penalty threshold as a consequence of their lack of contribution towards a better overall solution. This may allow other agents to choose better moves and, therefore, to improve the overall performance of the system. FeReRA is tested against its predecessor, ERA, and a comparative evaluation of both approaches is presented.

Citation

BASHARU, M., AHRIZ, H. and ARANA, I. 2004. Escaping local optima in multi-agent oriented constraint satisfaction. In Coenen, F., Preece, A. and Macintosh, A. (eds.) Research and development in intelligent systems XX: technical proceedings of the 23rd Annual international conference of the British Computer Society's Specialist Group on Artificial Intelligence (SGAI) (AI-2003), 15-17 December 2003, Cambridge, UK. London: Springer [online], pages 97-110. Available from: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-0-85729-412-8_8

• Presentation Conference Type: Conference Paper (published)
• Conference Name: 23rd Annual international conference of the British Computer Society's Specialist Group on Artificial Intelligence (SGAI) (AI-2003)
• Start Date: Dec 15, 2003
• End Date: Dec 17, 2003
• Acceptance Date: Jul 31, 2003
• Online Publication Date: Dec 31, 2004
• Publication Date: Dec 31, 2004
• Deposit Date: Jan 27, 2009
• Publicly Available Date: Jan 27, 2009
• Publisher: Springer
• Peer Reviewed: Peer Reviewed
• Pages: 97-110
• ISBN: 9781852337803
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-0-85729-412-8_8
• Public URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10059/298
• Contract Date: Jan 27, 2009