Abstract:
For multi-agent systems used in open environments, agents
might appear and disappear unpredictably. Middle agents
are advantageous since they allow a multi-agent system in
open environments to operate robustly in the face of agent
appearance and disappearance. The performance of middle
agents relies heavily on the matchmaking algorithms
used. Matchmaking is the process of finding an appropriate
provider for a requester through a middle agent. It was
argued that the practical performance (track record) of service
provider agents has a significant impact on the matchmaking
outcomes of middle agents. However, the track
records of agents are accumulated gradually during the executing
process of a multi-agent system. Thus there are no
track records available when the system is first launched. To
this end, this paper proposes an initial value generation approach,
which is based on fuzzy clustering algorithms. The
initial values generated can be used by matchmaking algorithms
at the very beginning of a system running. Some
simulation experiments were conducted. The experimental
results show that the proposed approach can generate reasonable
initial values for track records. With the agents'
story and the initial values of the track records, the performance
of matchmaking algorithms can be improved significantly.
