Courtesy as a Means to Coordinate

Abstract

We investigate the problem of multi-agent coordination under rationality constraints. Specifically, role allocation, task assignment, resource allocation, etc. Inspired by human behavior, we propose a framework (CA^3NONY) that enables fast convergence to efficient and fair allocations based on a simple convention of courtesy. We prove that following such convention induces a strategy which constitutes an $\epsilon$-subgame-perfect equilibrium of the repeated allocation game with discounting. Simulation results highlight the effectiveness of CA^3NONY as compared to state-of-the-art bandit algorithms, since it achieves more than two orders of magnitude faster convergence, higher efficiency, fairness, and average payoff.

arXiv commentAccepted at AAMAS 2019 (International Conference on Autonomous Agents and Multiagent Systems)