The logic behind negotiation : from pre-argument reasoning to argument-based negotiation

The use of agents in Electronic Commerce environments leads to the necessity to introduce some formal analysis and definitions. A 4-step method is introduced for developing EC-directed agents, which are able to take into account non-linearites such as gratitude and agreement. Negotiations that take into account a multi-step exchange of arguments provide extra information, at each step, for the intervening agents, enabling them to react accordingly. This argument-based negotiation among agents has much to gain from the use of Extended Logic Programming mechanisms. Incomplete information is common in EC scenarios; therefore arguments must also take into account the presence of statements with an unknown valuation

An architecture for rational agents interacting with complex environments

In this paper we sketch an agent architecture suitable to be used as a tool for exploring agent perception and multiagent interaction. Nowadays, there is no strict correspondence between the theoretical work in rational agents and their implementation. In this respect, it is our intention to reach a good trade-off between expressiveness and implementability.Eje: Inteligencia artificialRed de Universidades con Carreras en Informática (RedUNCI

Spatio-Temporal Context in Agent-Based Meeting Scheduling

Meeting scheduling is a common task for organizations of all sizes. It involves searching for a time and place when and where all the participants can meet. However, scheduling a meeting is generally difficult in that it attempts to satisfy the preferences of all participants. Negotiation tends to be an iterative and time consuming task. Proxy agents can handle the negotiation on behalf of the individuals without sacrificing their privacy or overlooking their preferences. This thesis examines the implications of formalizing meeting scheduling as a spatiotemporal negotiation problem. The “Children in the Rectangular Forest” (CRF) canonical model is applied to meeting scheduling. By formalizing meeting scheduling within the CRF model, a generalized problem emerges that establishes a clear relationship with other spatiotemporal distributed scheduling problems. The thesis also examines the implications of the proposed formalization to meeting scheduling negotiations. A protocol for meeting location selection is presented and evaluated using simulations

Together, Is Anything Possible? A Look at Collective Commitments for Agents

In this research, commitments - specifically collective commitments - are looked at as a way to model connections between agents in groups. Using the concepts and ideas from action languages, we propose to model these commitments as actions along with the other basic actions that autonomous agents are capable of performing. The languages developed will be tested against different examples from various multi-agent system (MAS) areas and implemented to run in answer set programming

State-of-the-art on evolution and reactivity

This report starts by, in Chapter 1, outlining aspects of querying and updating resources on the Web and on the Semantic Web, including the development of query and update languages to be carried out within the Rewerse project. From this outline, it becomes clear that several existing research areas and topics are of interest for this work in Rewerse. In the remainder of this report we further present state of the art surveys in a selection of such areas and topics. More precisely: in Chapter 2 we give an overview of logics for reasoning about state change and updates; Chapter 3 is devoted to briefly describing existing update languages for the Web, and also for updating logic programs; in Chapter 4 event-condition-action rules, both in the context of active database systems and in the context of semistructured data, are surveyed; in Chapter 5 we give an overview of some relevant rule-based agents frameworks

Language and argumentation in the controversy economic

This article offers an approach to the general structure of the controversy in economy. In our case we adopted a perspective to study a particular aspect of the rhetoric that comes from the context of a particular controversy: the controversy on the advantages of the free commerce between Daly and Bhagwati. It is sustained that the positions in economy present with relative frequency interest conflicts that are revealed in the dialectic one of the arguments. A proponent in open defense of the free commerce is not released of presumptions reflected in the field of the rhetoric. Reason why to include the language dimensions of the argumentation in economy has advantages for the field of the explanation and the epistemology in the social sciences.

The broadcast marketplace : Designing a more efficient local marketplace for goods and services

Thesis (S.M.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, School of Architecture and Planning, Program in Media Arts and Sciences, 2012.Cataloged from PDF version of thesis.Includes bibliographical references (p. 71-74).Today's online marketplaces for goods and services are imperfect. Participants make an initial post expressing their intention to buy or sell an object, but all offers on this post are private. These offers can be seen as expressions of other participants' intentions to buy or sell the same item. What if these offers were as public as the initial post? Would this decrease market friction and enable participants to close transactions more efficiently? What if every post and offer were tagged with a location enabling a real-time proximal picture of supply and demand? In this thesis, we explore a different kind of marketplace, a broadcast marketplace, where a combination of public post, proximal awareness and mobility decrease the friction of information flow and facilitate efficiency. This thesis explores the design, implementation and deployment of a system which enables users to efficiently view, understand and act upon this proximal picture of supply and demand. To test the viability of the broadcast marketplace we deployed Peddl, an implementation of the idea, in the MIT and Cambridge, MA community. Over the course of the trial we collected data on 5,839 unique visitors and 805 registered users, who made 726 posts totaling $234,913 in value. From this data we show that the additional transparency of supply and demand afforded by our design results in increased marketplace activity.Matthew Blackshaw.S.M

Electronic institution : an e-contracting platform for virtual organization

Automated tools that assist contract drafting are mostly focused on the representation of contract documents. Multi-agent systems have been ap-plied in the e-business domain, namely for information discovery and contract negotiation. Work on contract monitoring and enforcement is less explored. In this paper we start from these two observations to expose our efforts towards the development of tools that enable the computational representation of con-tracts and furthermore their monitoring and enforcement. We are mostly inter-ested in Virtual Organization settings, where groups of agents representing dif-ferent business entities form consortiums that must be regulated by appropriate norms. We are pursuing the concept of an Electronic Institution as a platform providing a normative environment and a set of e-contracting related services. Within this environment, contracts are represented through norms. We intend to test the applicability of our approach through illustration with case-studies and comparison with other contract representation formalisms