DUCT: An upper confidence bound approach to distributed constraint optimization problems
Journal article, 2017

We propose a distributed upper confidence bound approach, DUCT, for solving distributed constraint optimization problems. We compare four variants of this approach with a baseline random sampling algorithm, as well as other complete and incomplete algorithms for DCOPs. Under general assumptions, we theoretically show that the solution found by DUCT after T steps is approximately T-1-close to the optimal. Experimentally, we show that DUCT matches the optimal solution found by the well-known DPOP and O-DPOP algorithms on moderate-size problems, while always requiring less agent communication. For larger problems, where DPOP fails, we show that DUCT produces significantly better solutions than local, incomplete algorithms. Overall, we believe that DUCT is a practical, scalable algorithm for complex DCOPs.

Tree search

Coordination

Multiagent systems

Distributed constraint optimization

Author

Brammert Ottens

Booking.com

Christos Dimitrakakis

Chalmers, Computer Science and Engineering (Chalmers), Computing Science (Chalmers)

Boi Faltings

Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne (EPFL)

ACM Transactions on Intelligent Systems and Technology

2157-6904 (ISSN) 2157-6912 (eISSN)

Vol. 8 5 69

Subject Categories

Computer and Information Science

DOI

10.1145/3066156

More information

Latest update

4/5/2022 6