{"type":"ScholarlyArticle","title":"Faster Optimal Coalition Structure Generation via Offline Coalition Selection and Graph-Based Search","authors":[{"name":"Redha Taguelmimt","slug":"redha-taguelmimt","given":"Redha","family":"Taguelmimt","affiliation":"Univ Lyon , UCBL , CNRS , INSA Lyon , Centrale Lyon , Univ Lyon 2 , LIRIS , UMR5205 , Lyon , France"},{"name":"Samir Aknine","slug":"samir-aknine","given":"Samir","family":"Aknine","affiliation":"Univ Lyon , UCBL , CNRS , INSA Lyon , Centrale Lyon , Univ Lyon 2 , LIRIS , UMR5205 , Lyon , France"},{"name":"Djamila Boukredera","slug":"djamila-boukredera","given":"Djamila","family":"Boukredera","affiliation":"Laboratory of Applied Mathematics , Faculty of Exact Sciences , University of Bejaia , Bejaia , Algeria"},{"name":"Narayan Changder","slug":"narayan-changder","given":"Narayan","family":"Changder","affiliation":"TCG Centres for Research and Education in Science and Technology , Kolkata , India"},{"name":"Tuomas Sandholm","slug":"tuomas-sandholm","given":"Tuomas","family":"Sandholm","affiliation":"Computer Science Department , Carnegie Mellon University , Pittsburgh , USA; Strategy Robot, Inc.; Strategic Machine, Inc. 7 Optimized Markets ,"}],"abstract":"Coalition formation is a key capability in multi-agent systems. An important problem in coalition formation is coalition structure generation: partitioning agents into coalitions to optimize the social welfare. This is a challenging problem that has been the subject of active research for the past three decades. In this paper, we present a novel algorithm, SMART, for the problem based on a hybridization of three innovative techniques. Two of these techniques are based on dynamic programming, where we show a powerful connection between the coalitions selected for evaluation and the performance of the algorithms. These algorithms use offline phases to optimize the choice of coalitions to evaluate. The third one uses branch-and-bound and integer partition graph search to explore the solution space. Our techniques bring a new way of approaching the problem and a new level of precision to the field. In experiments over several common value distributions, we show that the hybridization of these techniques in SMART is faster than the fastest prior algorithms (ODP-IP, BOSS) in generating optimal solutions across all the value distributions.","doi":"10.24963/ijcai.2024/27","url":"https://ijcai.org/proceedings/2024/27","pdf":"https://ijcai.org/proceedings/2024/0027.pdf","markdown":"https://ijcai.org/proceedings/2024/27.md","bibtex":"https://ijcai.org/proceedings/2024/bibtex/27","volume":{"slug":"2024","title":"Proceedings of the Thirty-Third International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence","short_title":"IJCAI 2024","url":"https://ijcai.org/proceedings/2024/","year":2024,"location":"Jeju, Korea","dates":"3-9 August 2024","editors":"Kate Larson","isbn":"978-1-956792-04-1","publisher":"International Joint Conferences on Artificial Intelligence Organization","doi_prefix":"10.24963/ijcai.2024"},"section":"Agent-based and Multi-agent Systems","track":"Main Track","number":27,"pages":{"first":238,"last":248},"keywords":["Game Theory and Economic Paradigms: GTEP: Cooperative games","Agent-based and Multi-agent Systems: MAS: Coordination and cooperation","Machine Learning: ML: Optimization"],"videos":[],"references":[{"position":1,"raw":"[Changder et al., 2019] Narayan Changder, Samir Aknine, and Animesh Dutta. 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