A USER’S COGNITIVE WORKLOAD PERSPECTIVE IN NEGOTIATION SUPPORT SYSTEMS: AN EYE-TRACKING EXPERIMENT

Replying to several research calls, I report promising results from an initial experiment which com-pares different negotiation support system approaches concerning their potential to reduce a user’s cognitive workload. Using a novel laboratory-based non-intrusive objective measurement technique which derives the user’s cognitive workload from pupillary responses and eye-movements, I experi-mentally evaluated a standard, a chat-based, and an argumentation-based negotiation support system and found that a higher assistance level of negotiation support systems actually leads to a lower user’s cognitive workload. In more detail, I found that an argumentation-based system which fully automates the generation of the user’s arguments significantly decreases the user’s cognitive workload compared to a standard system. In addition I found that a negotiation support system implementing an additional chat function significantly causes higher cognitive workload for users compared to a standard system

Autonomic Management of Networked Small-Medium Factories

The Chapter reports the achievements of a research project that is developing a software platform with a suite of autonomic services enabling every company in the network to move from a situation where it wastes valuable resources in struggling with its customers and suppliers, towards a rational business environment where communication becomes faster, and operation and collaboration more efficient. The ultimate objective of the project is to set-up, develop, experiment and promote the adoption of a new collaboration practice within networked factories taking advantage of the autonomic model applied to a suite of support software services

Distributed, decentralised and compensational mechanisms for platoon formation

Verkehrsprobleme nehmen mit der weltweiten Urbanisierung und der Zunahme der Anzahl der Fahrzeuge pro Kopf zu. Platoons, eine Formation von eng hintereinander fahrenden Fahrzeugen, stellen sich als mögliche Lösung dar, da bestehende Forschungen darauf hinweisen, dass sie zu einer besseren Straßenauslastung beitragen, den Kraftstoffverbrauch und die Emissionen reduzieren und Engpässe schneller entlasten können. Rund um das Thema Platooning gibt es viele Aspekte zu erforschen: Sicherheit, Stabilität, Kommunikation, Steuerung und Betrieb, die allesamt notwendig sind, um den Einsatz von Platooning im Alltagsverkehr näher zu bringen. Während in allen genannten Bereichen bereits umfangreiche Forschungen durchgeführt wurden, gibt es bisher nur wenige Arbeiten, die sich mit der logischen Gruppierung von Fahrzeugen in Platoons beschäftigen. Daher befasst sich diese Arbeit mit dem noch wenig erforschten Problem der Platoonbildung, wobei sich die vorhandenen Beispiele mit auf Autobahnen fahrenden Lastkraftwagen beschäftigen. Diese Fälle befinden sich auf der strategischen und taktischen Ebene der Planung, da sie von einem großen Zeithorizont profitieren und die Gruppierung entsprechend optimiert werden kann. Die hier vorgestellten Ansätze befinden sich hingegen auf der operativen Ebene, indem Fahrzeuge aufgrund der verteilten und dezentralen Natur dieser Ansätze spontan und organisch gruppiert und gesteuert werden. Dadurch entstehen sogenannte opportunistische Platoons, die aufgrund ihrer Flexibilität eine vielversprechende Voraussetzung für alle Netzwerkarte bieten könnten. Insofern werden in dieser Arbeit zwei neuartige Algorithmen zur Bildung von Platoons vorgestellt: ein verteilter Ansatz, der von klassischen Routing-Problemen abgeleitet wurde, und ein ergänzender dezentraler kompensatorischer Ansatz. Letzteres nutzt automatisierte Verhandlungen, um es den Fahrzeugen zu erleichtern, sich auf der Basis eines monetären Austausches in einem Platoon zu organisieren. In Anbetracht der Tatsache, dass alle Verkehrsteilnehmer über eine Reihe von Präferenzen, Einschränkungen und Zielen verfügen, muss das vorgeschlagene System sicherstellen, dass jede angebotene Lösung für die einzelnen Fahrzeuge akzeptabel und vorteilhaft ist und den möglichen Aufwand, die Kosten und die Opfer überwiegt. Dies wird erreicht, indem den Platooning-Fahrzeugen eine Form von Anreiz geboten wird, im Sinne von entweder Kostensenkung oder Ampelpriorisierung. Um die vorgeschlagenen Algorithmen zu testen, wurde eine Verkehrssimulation unter Verwendung realer Netzwerke mit realistischer Verkehrsnachfrage entwickelt. Die Verkehrsteilnehmer wurden in Agenten umgewandelt und mit der notwendigen Funktionalität ausgestattet, um Platoons zu bilden und innerhalb dieser zu operieren. Die Anwendbarkeit und Eignung beider Ansätze wurde zusammen mit verschiedenen anderen Aspekten untersucht, die den Betrieb von Platoons betreffen, wie Größe, Verkehrszustand, Netzwerkpositionierung und Anreizmethoden. Die Ergebnisse zeigen, dass die vorgeschlagenen Mechanismen die Bildung von spontanen Platoons ermöglichen. Darüber hinaus profitierten die teilnehmenden Fahrzeuge mit dem auf verteilter Optimierung basierenden Ansatz und unter Verwendung kostensenkender Anreize unabhängig von der Platoon-Größe, dem Verkehrszustand und der Positionierung, mit Nutzenverbesserungen von 20% bis über 50% im Vergleich zur untersuchten Baseline. Bei zeitbasierten Anreizen waren die Ergebnisse uneinheitlich, wobei sich der Nutzen einiger Fahrzeuge verbesserte, bei einigen keine Veränderung eintrat und bei anderen eine Verschlechterung zu verzeichnen war. Daher wird die Verwendung solcher Anreize aufgrund ihrer mangelnden Pareto-Effizienz nicht empfohlen. Der kompensatorische und vollständig dezentralisierte Ansatz weißt einige Vorteile auf, aber die daraus resultierende Verbesserung war insgesamt vernachlässigbar. Die vorgestellten Mechanismen stellen einen neuartigen Ansatz zur Bildung von Platoons dar und geben einen aussagekräftigen Einblick in die Mechanik und Anwendbarkeit von Platoons. Dies schafft die Voraussetzungen für zukünftige Erweiterungen in der Planung, Konzeption und Implementierung effektiverer Infrastrukturen und Verkehrssysteme.Traffic problems have been on the rise corresponding with the increase in worldwide urbanisation and the number of vehicles per capita. Platoons, which are a formation of vehicles travelling close together, present themselves as a possible solution, as existing research indicates that they can contribute to better road usage, reduce fuel consumption and emissions and decongest bottlenecks faster. There are many aspects to be explored pertaining to the topic of platooning: safety, stability, communication, controllers and operations, all of which are necessary to bring platoons closer to use in everyday traffic. While extensive research has already made substantial strides in all the aforementioned fields, there is so far little work on the logical grouping of vehicles in platoons. Therefore, this work addresses the platoon formation problem, which has not been heavily researched, with existing examples being focused on large, freight vehicles travelling on highways. These cases find themselves on the strategic and tactical level of planning since they benefit from a large time horizon and the grouping can be optimised accordingly. The approaches presented here, however, are on the operational level, grouping and routing vehicles spontaneously and organically thanks to their distributed and decentralised nature. This creates so-called opportunistic platoons which could provide a promising premise for all networks given their flexibility. To this extent, this thesis presents two novel platoon forming algorithms: a distributed approach derived from classical routing problems, and a supplementary decentralised compensational approach. The latter uses automated negotiation to facilitate vehicles organising themselves in a platoon based on monetary exchanges. Considering that all traffic participants have a set of preferences, limitations and goals, the proposed system must ensure that any solution provided is acceptable and beneficial for the individual vehicles, outweighing any potential effort, cost and sacrifices. This is achieved by offering platooning vehicles some form of incentivisation, either cost reductions or traffic light prioritisation. To test the proposed algorithms, a traffic simulation was developed using real networks with realistic traffic demand. The traffic participants were transformed into agents and given the necessary functionality to build platoons and operate within them. The applicability and suitability of both approaches were investigated along with several other aspects pertaining to platoon operations such as size, traffic state, network positioning and incentivisation methods. The results indicate that the mechanisms proposed allow for spontaneous platoons to be created. Moreover, with the distributed optimisation-based approach and using cost-reducing incentives, participating vehicles benefited regardless of the platoon size, traffic state and positioning, with utility improvements ranging from 20% to over 50% compared to the studied baseline. For time-based incentives the results were mixed, with the utility of some vehicles improving, some seeing no change and for others, deteriorating. Therefore, the usage of such incentives would not be recommended due to their lack of Pareto-efficiency. The compensational and completely decentralised approach shows some benefits, but the resulting improvement was overall negligible. The presented mechanisms are a novel approach to platoon formation and provide meaningful insight into the mechanics and applicability of platoons. This sets the stage for future expansions into planning, designing and implementing more effective infrastructures and traffic systems

Dynamic enterprise modelling: a methodology for animating dynamic social networks

PhD ThesisSince the introduction of the Internet and the realisation of its potential companies have either transformed their operation or are in the process of doing so. It has been observed, that developments in I.T., telecommunications and the Internet have boosted the number of enterprises engaging into e-commerce, e-business and virtual enterprising. These trends are accompanied by re-shaping, transformation and changes in an enterprise's boundaries. The thesis gives an account of the research into the area of dynamic enterprise modelling and provides a modelling methodology that allows different roles and business models to be tested and evaluated without the risk associated with committing to a change

A Framework for Argumentation-Based Agent Negotiation in Uncertain Settings

Automated negotiation technologies are being increasingly used in business applications, especially in the e-Commerce domain. Argumentation-Based Negotiation (ABN), among the existing approaches, has been distinguished as a powerful approach to automated negotiation due to its ability to provide more sophisticated information (arguments) that justifies and supports agents’ proposals in order to mutually influence their preference relations on the set of offers, and consequently on the negotiation outcome. During the recent years, argumentation-based negotiation has received a considerable attention in the area of agent communication. However, current proposals are mostly concerned with presenting protocols for showing how agents can interact with each other, and how arguments and offers can be generated, evaluated and exchanged under the assumption of certainty. Therefore, none of these proposals is directly targeting the agents’ uncertainty about the selection of their moves nor designing the appropriate negotiation strategies based on this uncertainty in order to help the negotiating agents better make their decisions in the negotiation settings where agents have limited or uncertain information, precluding them from making optimal individual decisions. In this thesis, we tackle the aforementioned problems by advocating an Argumentation-Based Agent Negotiation (ABAN) framework that is capable of handling the problem of agents’ uncertainty during the negotiation process. We begin by proposing an argumentation framework enriched with a new element called agent’s uncertainty as an important parameter in the agent theory to allow negotiating agents to decide which moves to play and reason about the selection of these moves under the assumption of uncertainty. Then, a method for agents’ uncertainty assessment is presented. In particular, we use Shannon entropy to assess agent’s uncertainty about their moves at each dialogue step as well as for the whole dialogue. Negotiation strategies and agent profiles issues are also explored and a methodology for designing novel negotiation strategies and agent profiles under the assumption of uncertainty is developed. Moreover, two important outcome properties namely, completeness and Nash equilibrium are discussed. Finally, the applicability of our framework is explored through several scenarios of the well-known Buyer/Seller case study. The obtained empirical results confirm the effectiveness of using our uncertainty-aware techniques and demonstrate the usefulness of using such techniques in argumentation-based negotiations

Trust in Sharing Resources in Logistics Collaboration

Collaboration on resource sharing advocates a joint usage of resources by multiple parties (actors) to attain mutual benefits. Resource sharing becomes vital when resources under consideration are scarce, challenging, and expensive to attain; as well when they are idle or underutilized. In collaborative logistics, resource sharing entails the joint usage of the physical and non-physical assets. Shared assets include the transportation vehicles (trucks), warehouses, distribution centers, information, on-demand staffing, and logistics services offered under cloud computing. Through sharing, collaborating partners in logistics can reduce costs and harms to the environment, but also improve the efficiency of logistical functions. Although collaborative sharing is beneficial, still many difficulties impede its uptake. The difficulties include how to choose partners, establish and maintain trust among partners involved. Indeed, in both academia and industry, low-level trust inhibits the collaboration critically on sharing logistics resources. To this end, the present dissertation addresses the trust problem encountered by collaborating partners when they are sharing logistics resources. It deals with the trust problem by developing the Trust Mechanism (TrustMech) concept. The primary role of the TrustMech is to help logistics stakeholders acquire the far-reaching understanding about the trustworthiness of prospective networks of sharing they configure, before advancing them to an implementation stage. The TrustMech stands on a mitigation approach that focuses on estimating outcomes of trust uncertainties a rather than a their sources. Henceforth, this dissertation advances on estimating outcomes of trust uncertainties to answer the following central Research Question (RQ): how can collaborating partners acquire the far-reaching understanding about the trustworthiness of prospective networks of sharing they configure? An approach to the research problem, which as well answers the RQ proceeds as follows. The first steps involve establishing behavioral factors and parameters, which influence trust in collaborative sharing of logistics resources. The second stage entails establishing a conceptual framework that depicts and guides trust-based interaction of collaborating partners. The third step comprises developing the TrustMech concept, validating it in both the conceptual and operational aspects, and demonstrating its application by carrying out controlled (simulation) experiments in Multi-Agent Systems. In particular, the proposed TrustMech concept characterizes fundamental logical processes that account for trusting decisions, actions, and reactions of collaborating partners to reinforce emergent trusting outcomes The core contributions of this dissertation are the general-purpose TrustMech and the operational TrustMech. The operational TrustMech is customary for collaborative sharing of logistics resources. Regarding its application, the operational TrustMech provides logistics managers and stakeholders the ability to forecast how a configured network of sharing may, in respect of trustworthiness, function upon its implementation. To clarify further, the operational TrustMech scrutinizes many issues. For example, it scrutinizes trustworthiness of the configured network regarding possible strengths and pitfalls and provides pathway explanations underlying such foreseen strengths and pitfalls. Secondly, the operational TrustMech scrutinizes effects which such strengths and pitfalls can generate. Moreover, the operational TrustMech estimates an extent to which behavioral factors influence the trustworthiness of the individual partner and entire resource sharing network. Future research works include extending the TrustMech and replicating the study using system data. Additional future work consists of adjusting the design and settings used, as well as incorporating additional predictor and response variables into the operational TrustMech

Conceptual aspects management of competitiveness the economic entities: collective monograph

The authors of the book have come to the conclusion that it is necessary to effectively use modern approaches the management of competitiveness the economic entities in order to increase the efficiency of using the resource potential, formation of competitive advantages and development strategies. Basic research focuses on economic diagnostics of ensuring the competitiveness of economic entities, marketing and logistics, analysis of energy-efficient potential, assessment of development potential. The research results have been implemented in the different models of inventory management, corporate social responsibility management, business process management and project management. The results of the study can be used in decision-making at the level the economic entities in different areas of activity and organizational-legal forms of ownership, ministries and departments that promote of development the economic entities and increase their competitiveness. The results can also be used by students and young scientists in modern concepts and mechanisms for management of competitiveness the economic entities in the context of efficient use the resource potential and introduction of modern innovations