"Distributed Constraint Satisfaction: Foundation of Cooperation in Multi-Agent Systems"

10/23/2000: [time not recorded]
[location not recorded]

Abstract: When there exist multiple agents in a shared environment, there usually exist constraints among possible actions of these agents. A distributed constraint satisfaction problem (distributed CSP) is a problem to find a consistent combination of actions that satisfies these inter-agent constraints. The research of Constraint Satisfaction Problems has a long and distinguished history in AI as a general framework that can formalize various application problems. Similarly, a distributed CSP is a fundamental problem for achieving the coordination among agents, and can formalize various application problems in Multi-agent Systems (e.g., distributed resource allocation problems, distributed scheduling problems, distributed interpretation tasks, and multi-agent truth maintenance tasks). This talk will explain the formal definition, algorithms, and MAS applications of distributed CSPs.

About Makoto Yokoo: Dr. Makoto Yokoo is currently a senior research scientist in NTT Communication Science Laboratories, Kyoto, Japan. He was a visiting research scientist at the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, from 1990 to 1991. His research interests include multi-agent systems, search/constraint satisfaction, and mechanism design among agents. He recently published a book "Distributed Constraint Satisfaction: Foundation of Cooperation in Multi-Agent Systems" from Springer. He also co-authored a chapter "Search algorithms for agents" of the book "Introduction to Distributed Artificial Intelligence", which is published from MIT Press.

Last updated: Mon Jun 19 17:44:06 2006