Title: Game Modeling and Coordination Processes For Two-Level Multi-Agent Systems

Authors: Raimo P. Hämäläinen, Eero Kettunen and Harri Ehtamo

Status: Proceedings of the Sixteenth IASTED International Conference, MODELLING, IDENTIFICATION AND CONTROL, Innsbruck, Austria, p. 234-240, February 17-19, 1997.

Keywords: Artificial intelligence, Coordination, Game theory, Multi-agent systems, Organizational theory

In this paper we describe coordination schemes in hierarchical multi-agent systems where agents in higher positions in the hierarchy coordinate actions of the agents in lower positions in the hierarchy. We illustrate the coordination problem in two-level systems where one agent is on top of the hierarchy acting as a leader. The domains where such settings are found include, for example, cases where there is a leader who sets prices to a common resource used by the follower agents. The goal is to find a pricing strategy which leads to the optimal use of the resource. We consider the case where the leader has to make decisions without complete information of the other agents’ goals. Coordination issues in the above sense have earlier been discussed in the economics and game theory literature.