Lecture Notes in Computer Science, 2000, Volume 1788/2000, 113-130, DOI: 10.1007/10720026_7

Bid Selection Strategies for Multi-agent Contracting in the Presence of Scheduling Constraints

John Collins, Rashmi Sundareswara, Maria Gini and Bamshad Mobasher

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Abstract

Bid evaluation in a multi-agent automated contracting environment presents a challenging search problem. We introduce a multi-criterion, anytime bid evaluation strategy that incorporates cost, task coverage, temporal feasibility, and risk estimation into a simulated annealing framework. We report on an experimental evaluation using a set of increasingly informed search heuristics within simulated annealing. The results show that excess focus on improvement leads to faster improvement early on, at the cost of a lower likelihood of finding a solution that satisfies all the constraints. The most successful approach used a combination of random and focused bid selection methods, along with pruning and repeated restarts.

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