Algorithms for Distributed Constraint Satisfaction: A Review

  • Authors:

  • Makoto Yokoo;Katsutoshi Hirayama

  • Affiliations:

  • NTT Communication Science Laboratories, 2-4 Hikaridai, Seika-cho, Soraku-gun, Kyoto 619-0237, Japan yokoo@cslab.kecl.ntt.co.jp;Kobe University of Mercantile Marine, 5-1-1 Fukae-minami-machi, Higashinada-ku, Kobe 658-0022, Japan hirayama@ti.kshosen.ac.jp

  • Venue:
  • Autonomous Agents and Multi-Agent Systems
  • Year:
  • 2000

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Abstract

When multiple agents are in a shared environment, there usually exist constraints among the 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. Various application problems in multi-agent systems can be formalized as distributed CSPs. This paper gives an overview of the existing research on distributed CSPs. First, we briefly describe the problem formalization and algorithms of normal, centralized CSPs. Then, we show the problem formalization and several MAS application problems of distributed CSPs. Furthermore, we describe a series of algorithms for solving distributed CSPs, i.e., the asynchronous backtracking, the asynchronous weak-commitment search, the distributed breakout, and distributed consistency algorithms. Finally, we show two extensions of the basic problem formalization of distributed CSPs, i.e., handling multiple local variables, and dealing with over-constrained problems.