Achieving Coordination in Multi-Agent Systems by Stable Local Conventions under Community Networks

Abstract

Recently, the study of social conventions has attracted much attention in the literature. We notice that a type of interesting phenomena, local convention phenomena, may also exist in certain multiagent systems. When agents are partitioned into compact communities, different local conventions emerge in different communities. In this paper, we provide a definition for local conventions, and propose two metrics measuring their strength and diversity. In our experimental study, we show that agents can achieve coordination via establishing diverse stable local conventions, which indicates a practical way to solve coordination problems other than the traditional global convention emergence. Moreover, we find that with smaller community sizes, denser connections and fewer available actions, diverse local conventions emerge in shorter time.

Norm emergence in multiagent systems: a viewpoint paper

“…Not surprisingly, it takes longer for norms to evolve for larger action sets, where several actions can result in the same payoff [93]. Additionally Hu and Leung [57] investigate the use of several actions with equal payoff and found that there was a diverse set of actions that emerged within small groups/communities but no global emergence observed. These results lend support to the argument that agents choose normative actions only to increase their payoff, and if payoffs were constant for any action, it would be difficult for agents to converge to a single one.…”

“…Norm emergence or convergence is widely accepted to have happened, or a norm is said to have emerged, when a predetermined percentage of the population observes the Balaraman and Singh [13] Beheshti and Sukthankar [16] Beheshti et al [17] Bench-Capon and Modgil [18] Boissier et al [22] Boella and van der Torre [20] Boella and van der Torre [19] Boyd and Richerson [23] Broersen et al [24] Brooks et al [25] Campos et al [26] Chakrabarti and Basu [28] Chao Yu et al [29] Cliffe et al [31] Conte and Castelfranchi [32] Criado et al [35] Dascalu et al [37] Dastani and van der Torre [38] dos Santos Neto et al [41] Franks et al [42] Frantz et al [43] Ghorbani et al [48] Ghorbani and Bravo [46] Hoffmann [55] Hofmann et al [56] Hassani-Mahmooei and Parris [53] Hao and Leung [49] Hao et al [50] Hao et al [51] Hao et al [52] Hu and Leung [57] Hübner et al [58] Lopez [65] Lotzmann et al [66] Lee et al [61] Mahmoud et al [67] Mashayekhi et al [68] Mukherjee et al [75] Mungovan et al [76] Morales et al [70] Morales et al [72] Morales et al [71] Mor...…”

“…Hu and Leung [57] study local norm emergence, similar to the concept of sub-conventions, versus global norm emergence. They study a community network structure where there are dense connections in small communities and sparse connections between communities within a population.…”

“…The topology of the network can mean some agents are poorly connected, and can have adopted a different norm within the small group. In addition, it could mean that agents within these small groups have little or no interaction with the rest of the network so they cannot be influenced by their actions, as observed in Hu and Leung [57].…”

“…On the other hand, the literature also includes many investigations of interactions with nearby agents or close neighbours [53,57,80,87,92,97,106]. Researchers argue that this method is preferred as it reflects human interaction.…”