So, David reminded me of the problem of Coopetition and how that would be an issue with using bounties with the cars.  Also, I love this problem (I’ve looked at it off and on since undergrad). Coopetition is basically the problem is how can competing teams learn to cooperate.  So, here are my thoughts on how I think that a solution may emerge due to how bounties work and who the bondsmen are.

So, on to bounties and the idea of conflicting goals. This is why people shouldn’t be driving :). People don’t compromise because we have no way to really communicate our goals with other drivers other than through “signaling” by essentially going slower or faster and annoying some people. It would be interesting to show in a simulator what the throughput through intersections, time to destination, fuel economy, etc. is when the agents can’t communicate, are greedy and have different objectives. I think that bad things happen. However, it would be good to get a base line of when things start going bad for the scenario.

The main problem I think is that bounties are more locally greedy and that the “world” might want to put a bounty out that helps to cause cooperation among conflicting goals. These could adapt as the “world” observes the agents. The world could be an intersection or a road or something. And the road puts a bounty out for cars to get into some lane or turning left etc.

This could be an entirely different way to work the problem. The cars place their constraints like fuel efficient or fast and their destination and then the world directs them by alerting them to bounties that they may be interested in doing in order to satisfy their constraints in a more cooperative manner. Then this becomes a multiagent planning problem. So, one of the roads could put a bounty out for x number of cars with these properties and then some intersections might want to put out bounties to those cars to change lanes and turn onto that road (that have the properties that the road desired). So, then the car would have to learn whether to do one of the bounties or not and continue on its original route.

I think that this sort of framework would be applicable to smart grid charging and discharging of batteries and consumer devices (like electric cars, air conditions, etc) in order for the grid to be optimal. The cars are the electrons 🙂 wires are the roads, batteries are intersections and houses/appliances are destinations.  Or some variation….

So, essentially I am separating those that are doing the competition (the humans/cars) and those that are cooperating (the road system).  By doing so, the components of the road system are able to use the competitiveness of the agents to manipulate the system.

 

Another idea is that in large networks we may need a broker of bounties.  This would incorporate the work I did with Nil.  The packages in this case would be Bounties….