A task delegation model: An approach based on trustworthiness in sub-delegations and delegation chain formation

Task delegation is a fundamental mechanism adopted by agents to solve problems that involve teamwork. A critical issue in this context is trust establishment, in which agents must estimate the trustworthiness of potential partners based on their social behavior and environmental conditions. In the literature, most computational trust models address task delegation from a mono-episodic perspective, ignoring the possibility of sub-delegations and the resulting formation of delegation chains. Delegation chains enable the representation of complex social structures that capture agents’ dependency relationships. This work presents a task delegation model that explicitly supports sub-delegations through task decomposition and recursive delegation, while accounting for delegation chains. In the proposed model, agents select partners based on historical information about their performance, combined with social evaluations such as social image, reputation, and references. Experimental results show that, when compared to mono-episodic delegation approaches, the proposed model is particularly effective in dynamic environments where agents’ behavior may change over time.