On-line computation of Stackelberg equilibria with synchronous parallel genetic algorithms

Abstract

This paper develops a method to compute the Stackelberg equilibria in sequential games. We construct a normal form game which is interactively played by an artificially intelligent leader, GAL, and a follower, GAF. The leader is a genetic algorithm breeding a population of potential actions to better anticipate the follower's reaction. The follower is also a genetic algorithm training on-line a suitable neural network to evolve a population of rules to respond to any move in the leader's action space. When GAs repeatedly play this game updating each other synchronously, populations converge to the Stackelberg equilibrium of the sequential game. We provide numerical examples attesting to the efficiency of the algorithm. © 2002 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.