Parallel Index-Based Search Algorithm for Coalition Structure Generation (Student Abstract)

Abstract

In this paper, we propose a novel algorithm to address the Coalition Structure Generation (CSG) problem. Specifically, we use a novel representation of the search space that enables it to be explored in a new way. We introduce an index-based exact algorithm. Our algorithm is anytime, produces optimal solutions, and can be run on large-scale problems with hundreds of agents. Our experimental evaluation on a benchmark with several value distributions shows that our representation of the search space that we combined with the proposed algorithm provides high-quality results for the CSG problem and outperforms existing state-of-the-art algorithms.