Task Assignment in Multiagent Systems Based on Vickrey-Type Auctioning and Leveled Commitment Contracting

A key problem addressed in the area of multiagent systems is the automated assignment of multiple tasks to executing agents. The automation of multiagent task assignment requires that the individual agents (i) use a common protocol that prescribes how they have to interact in order to come to an agreement and (ii) fix their final agreement in a contract that specifies the commitments resulting from the assignment on which they agreed. The work reported in this paper is part of a broader research effort aiming at the design and analysis of approaches to automated multiagent task assignment that combine auction protocols and leveled commitment contracts. The primary advantage of such approaches is that they are applicable in a broad range of realistic scenarios in which knowledge-intensive negotiation among agents is not feasible and in which unforeseeable future environmental changes may require agents to breach their contracts. Examples of standard auction protocols are the English auction, the Dutch auction, and the Vickrey auction. In [2, 3] combinations of English/Dutch-type auctioning and leveled commitment contracting have been described. In this paper the focus is on the combination of Vickrey-type auctioning and leveled commitment contracting.