A systematic market approach to distributed constraint problems

Abstract

MarCon (Market-based Constraints) applies market-based control to distributed constraint problems. It offers a new approach to distributing constraint problems that avoids challenges to current approaches in some domains, and it provides a systematic way to apply markets to many problems. Constraint agents interact with one another via the variable agents in which they share an interest, expressing their preferences over sets of assignments. Each variable integrates this information from the constraints interested in it and provides feedback that enables the constraints to shrink their sets of assignments until they converge on a solution. MarCon has been tested in the domain of mechanical design, in which its set-narrowing process is particularly useful.