Truthful Mechanisms for Delivery with Agents
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Author / Producer
Date
2017
Publication Type
Conference Paper
ETH Bibliography
yes
Citations
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Abstract
We study the game-theoretic task of selecting mobile agents to deliver multiple items on a network. An instance is given by $m$ packages (physical objects) which have to be transported between specified source-target pairs in an undirected graph, and $k$ mobile heterogeneous agents, each being able to transport one package at a time. Following a recent model [Baertschi et al. 2017], each agent i has a different rate of energy consumption per unit distance traveled, i.e., its weight. We are interested in optimizing or approximating the total energy consumption over all selected agents. Unlike previous research, we assume the weights to be private values known only to the respective agents. We present three different mechanisms which select, route and pay the agents in a truthful way that guarantees voluntary participation of the agents, while approximating the optimum energy consumption by a constant factor. To this end, we analyze a previous structural result and an approximation algorithm given in [Baertschi et al. 2017]. Finally, we show that for some instances in the case of a single package, the sum of the payments can be bounded in terms of the optimum.
Permanent link
Publication status
published
External links
Book title
17th Workshop on Algorithmic Approaches for Transportation Modelling, Optimization, and Systems (ATMOS 2017)
Journal / series
OpenAccess Series in Informatics (OASIcs)
Volume
59
Pages / Article No.
2
Publisher
Schloss Dagstuhl – Leibniz-Zentrum für Informatik
Event
17th Workshop on Algorithmic Approaches for Transportation Modelling, Optimization, and Systems (ATMOS 2017)
Edition / version
Methods
Software
Geographic location
Date collected
Date created
Subject
delivery; agent; energy optimization; approximation mechanism; frugality
Organisational unit
03340 - Widmayer, Peter (emeritus) / Widmayer, Peter (emeritus)