Negotiation in Multi-Agent Systems

In systems composed of multiple autonomous agents, negotiation is a key form of interaction that enables groups of agents to arrive at a mutual agreement regarding some belief, goal or plan, for example. Particularly because the agents are autonomous and cannot be assumed to be benevolent, agents must influence others to convince them to act in certain ways, and negotiation is thus critical for managing such inter-agent dependencies. The process of negotiation may be of many different forms, such as auctions, protocols in the style of the contract net, and argumentation, but it is unclear just how sophisticated the agents or the protocols for interaction must be for successful negotiation in different contexts. All these issues were raised in the panel session on negotiation

Tasks for Agent-Based Negotiation Teams:Analysis, Review, and Challenges

An agent-based negotiation team is a group of interdependent agents that join together as a single negotiation party due to their shared interests in the negotiation at hand. The reasons to employ an agent-based negotiation team may vary: (i) more computation and parallelization capabilities, (ii) unite agents with different expertise and skills whose joint work makes it possible to tackle complex negotiation domains, (iii) the necessity to represent different stakeholders or different preferences in the same party (e.g., organizations, countries, and married couple). The topic of agent-based negotiation teams has been recently introduced in multi-agent research. Therefore, it is necessary to identify good practices, challenges, and related research that may help in advancing the state-of-the-art in agent-based negotiation teams. For that reason, in this article we review the tasks to be carried out by agent-based negotiation teams. Each task is analyzed and related with current advances in different research areas. The analysis aims to identify special challenges that may arise due to the particularities of agent-based negotiation teams.Comment: Engineering Applications of Artificial Intelligence, 201

Investigating adaptive, confidence-based strategic negotiations in complex multiagent environments

We propose an adaptive 1-to-many negotiation strategy for multiagent coalition formation in complex environments that are dynamic, uncertain, and real-time. Our strategy deals with how to assign multiple issues to a set of concurrent negotiations based on an initiating agent’s confidence in its profiling of its peer agents. When an agent is confident, it uses a packaged approach—conducting multiple multi-issue negotiations—with its peers. Otherwise, it uses a pipelined approach—conducting multiple single-issue negotiations—with its peers. The initiating agent is also capable of using both approaches in a hybrid, dealing with a mixed group of responding peers. An agent’s confidence in its profile or view of another agent is crucial, and that depends on the environment in which the agents operate. To evaluate the proposed strategy, we use a coalition formation framework in a complex environment. Results show that the proposed strategy outperforms the purely pipelined strategy and the purely packaged strategy in both efficiency and effectiveness

Investigating adaptive, confidence-based strategic negotiations in complex multiagent environments

We propose an adaptive 1-to-many negotiation strategy for multiagent coalition formation in complex environments that are dynamic, uncertain, and real-time. Our strategy deals with how to assign multiple issues to a set of concurrent negotiations based on an initiating agent’s confidence in its profiling of its peer agents. When an agent is confident, it uses a packaged approach—conducting multiple multi-issue negotiations—with its peers. Otherwise, it uses a pipelined approach—conducting multiple single-issue negotiations—with its peers. The initiating agent is also capable of using both approaches in a hybrid, dealing with a mixed group of responding peers. An agent’s confidence in its profile or view of another agent is crucial, and that depends on the environment in which the agents operate. To evaluate the proposed strategy, we use a coalition formation framework in a complex environment. Results show that the proposed strategy outperforms the purely pipelined strategy and the purely packaged strategy in both efficiency and effectiveness

A new approach for multi-agent coalition formation and management in the scope of electricity markets

This paper presents a new methodology for the creation and management of coalitions in Electricity Markets. This approach is tested using the multi-agent market simulator MASCEM, taking advantage of its ability to provide the means to model and simulate VPP (Virtual Power Producers). VPPs are represented as coalitions of agents, with the capability of negotiating both in the market, and internally, with their members, in order to combine and manage their individual specific characteristics and goals, with the strategy and objectives of the VPP itself. The new features include the development of particular individual facilitators to manage the communications amongst the members of each coalition independently from the rest of the simulation, and also the mechanisms for the classification of the agents that are candidates to join the coalition. In addition, a global study on the results of the Iberian Electricity Market is performed, to compare and analyze different approaches for defining consistent and adequate strategies to integrate into the agents of MASCEM. This, combined with the application of learning and prediction techniques provide the agents with the ability to learn and adapt themselves, by adjusting their actions to the continued evolving states of the world they are playing in

Combining Norms, Roles, Dependence and Argumentation in Agreement Technologies

A major challenge for Agreement Technologies is the combination of existing technologies and rea- soning methods. In this paper we focus on the three core layers of the Agreement Technologies tower, called Norms, Organization and Argumentation. We present a framework for arguing about agreements based on norms, roles and dependence, together with a case study from the sharing economy

Abstract Argumentation / Persuasion / Dynamics

The act of persuasion, a key component in rhetoric argumentation, may be viewed as a dynamics modifier. We extend Dung's frameworks with acts of persuasion among agents, and consider interactions among attack, persuasion and defence that have been largely unheeded so far. We characterise basic notions of admissibilities in this framework, and show a way of enriching them through, effectively, CTL (computation tree logic) encoding, which also permits importation of the theoretical results known to the logic into our argumentation frameworks. Our aim is to complement the growing interest in coordination of static and dynamic argumentation.Comment: Arisaka R., Satoh K. (2018) Abstract Argumentation / Persuasion / Dynamics. In: Miller T., Oren N., Sakurai Y., Noda I., Savarimuthu B., Cao Son T. (eds) PRIMA 2018: Principles and Practice of Multi-Agent Systems. PRIMA 2018. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 11224. Springer, Cha

Agents and E-commerce: Beyond Automation

The fast-growing information and communication technologies have shifted the contemporary commerce in both its information and market spaces. Businesses demand a new generation of agile and adaptive commerce systems. Towards this end, software agents, a type of autonomous artifacts, have been viewed as a promising solution. They have been taking an increasingly important part in facilitating e-commerce operations in the last two decades. This article presents a systematized overview of the diversity of agent applications in commerce. The paper argues that agents start playing more substantial role in determining social affairs. They also have a strong potential to be used to build the future highly responsive and smart e-commerce systems. The opportunities and challenges presented by proliferation of agent technologies in e-commerce necessitate the development of insights into their place in information systems research, as well as practical implications for the management