Forming Stable, Overlapping Coalitions in an Open Multi-agent System

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Coalition formation is an essential component for multi-agent systems in environments where tasks can be too complicated or resource intensive to be completed efficiently by a single agent. By forming coalitions, agents are able to work together and combine resources to complete a task that would not otherwise be possible. We propose a mechanism for forming stable, overlapping coalitions of self-interested agents. Current coalition formation algorithms tend to assume that coalitions cannot overlap, meaning that an agent can only be a member of one coalition at any given time; their restrictions prevent the system from efficiently allocating all of the agents' resources.