Stability and Strategic Time-Dependent Behaviour in Multiagent Systems

Abstract

Temporal reasoning and strategic behaviour are important abilities of multiagent systems. We introduce a game-theoretic framework suitable for modelling selfish and rational agents which can store and reason about the evolution of an environment, and act according to their interests. Our aim is to identify stable interactions: those where no agent has a benefit from changing his behaviour to another. For this reason we deploy the game-theoretic concept of Nash equilibrium and strong Nash equilibrium. We show that not all agent interactions can be stable. Also, we investigate the computational complexity for verifying and checking the existence of stable agent interactions. This paves the way for developing agents which can take appropriate decisions in competitive and strategic situations.