Multi-agent coordination via communication partitions

Abstract: Coordinating the behaviour of self-interested agents in the presence of multiple Nash equilibria is a major research challenge for multi-agent systems. Pre-game communication between all the players can aid coordination in cases where the Pareto-optimal payoff is unique, but can lead to deadlocks when there are multiple payoffs on the Pareto frontier. We consider a communication partition, where only players within the same coalition can communicate with each other, and they can establish an agreement (a coordinated joint-action) if it is envy-free, credible, and Pareto-optimal. We show that under a natural assumption about symmetry, certain communication partitions can induce social optimal outcomes in singleton congestion games. This game is a reasonable model for a decentralised, anonymous system where players are required to choose from a range of identical resources, and incur costs that are increasing and convex in the total number of players sharing the same resource. The communication partition can be seen as a mechanism for inducing efficient outcomes in this context.