Implementing MAS agreement processes based on consensus networks

[EN] Consensus is a negotiation process where agents need to agree upon certain quantities of interest. The theoretical framework for solving consensus problems in dynamic networks of agents was formally introduced by Olfati-Saber and Murray, and is based on algebraic graph theory, matrix theory and control theory. Consensus problems are usually simulated using mathematical frameworks. However, implementation using multi-agent system platforms is a very difficult task due to problems such as synchronization, distributed finalization, and monitorization among others. The aim of this paper is to propose a protocol for the consensus agreement process in MAS in order to check the correctness of the algorithm and validate the protocol. © Springer International Publishing Switzerland 2013.This work is supported by ww and PROMETEO/2008/051 projects of the Spanish government, CONSOLIDER-INGENIO 2010 under grant CSD2007-00022, TIN2012-36586-C03-01 and PAID-06-11-2084.Palomares Chust, A.; Carrascosa Casamayor, C.; Rebollo Pedruelo, M.; Gómez, Y. (2013). Implementing MAS agreement processes based on consensus networks. Distributed Computing and Artificial Intelligence. 217:553-560. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-00551-5_66S553560217Argente, E.: et al: An Abstract Architecture for Virtual Organizations: The THOMAS approach. Knowledge and Information Systems 29(2), 379–403 (2011)Búrdalo, L.: et al: TRAMMAS: A tracing model for multiagent systems. Eng. Appl. Artif. Intel. 24(7), 1110–1119 (2011)Fogués, R.L., et al.: Towards Dynamic Agent Interaction Support in Open Multiagent Systems. In: Proc. of the 13th CCIA, vol. 220, pp. 89–98. IOS Press (2010)Luck, M., et al.: Agent technology: Computing as interaction (a roadmap for agent based computing). Eng. Appl. Artif. Intel. (2005)Mailler, R., Lesser, V.: Solving distributed constraint optimization problems using cooperative mediation. In: AAMAS 2004, pp. 438–445 (2004)Olfati-Saber, R., Fax, J.A., Murray, R.M.: Consensus and cooperation in networked multi-agent systems. Proceedings of the IEEE 95(1), 215–233 (2007)Pujol-Gonzalez, M.: Multi-agent coordination: Dcops and beyond. In: Proc. of IJCAI, pp. 2838–2839 (2011)Such, J.: et al: Magentix2: A privacy-enhancing agent platform. Eng. Appl. Artif. Intel. 26(1), 96–109 (2013)Vinyals, M., et al.: Constructing a unifying theory of dynamic programming dcop algorithms via the generalized distributive law. Autonomous Agents and Multi-Agent Systems 22, 439–464 (2011

Abstract argumentation and dialogues between agents

A multiagent system (MAS) is made up of multiple interacting autonomous agents. It can be viewed as a society in which each agent performs its activity, cooperating to achieve common goals, or competing for them. Thus, every agent has the ability to do social interactions with other agents establishing dialogues via some kind of agent-communication language, under some communication protocol [6]. Argumentation is suitable to model several kind of dialogues in multi-agents systems. Some authors are actually using defeasible argumentation to model negotiation processes between agents [3, 7]. Our current research activities are related to the use of argumentation in agent’s interaction, such as negotiation among several participants, persuasion, acquisition of knowledge and other forms of social dialogue. Usually, argumentation appears as a mechanism to deal with disagreement between agents, for example when some conflict of interest is present. Argumentation can be used, not only to argue about something, but to know more about other agents: it is enough powerfull to play an important role in general social interaction in multiagents systems. The kind of arguments used in dialogues, and their relationship, depends on the type of dialogue involved. According to [8], dialogues can be classified in negotiation, where there is a conflict of interests, persuasion where there is a conflict of opinion or beliefs, indagation where there is a need for an explanation or proof of some proposition, deliberation or coordination where there is a need to coordinate goals and actions, and one special kind of dialogue called eristic based on personal conflicts. Except the last one, all these dialogues may exist in multi-agents systems as part of social activities among agents. Our aim is to define an abstract argumentation framework to capture the behaviour of these different dialogues, and we present here the main ideas behind this task and the new formal definitions. We are not interested in the logic used to construct arguments, nor the comparison method used. Our formulation completely abstracts from the internal structure of the arguments, considering them as moves made in a dialogue. We also consider multiagent systems as a set of multiple interacting autonomous agents.Eje: Inteligencia artificialRed de Universidades con Carreras en Informática (RedUNCI

SamenMarkt®, a Proposal for Restoring Trust in the Horticultural Fresh Food Market by Using Multi-Agent System Technology

In the horticultural fresh food supply chain network in the Netherlands, a crisis is emerging. The market is out of balance and many growers are facing bankruptcy, in the period of 2011–2013, 50% of the growers were not able to pay interest and redemption. Trust between participants in the supply chain network has decreased. This chapter presents the currently not established and identifies design requirements for new systems to address this challenge and provide directions for possible improvement. As a result, this chapter introduces the concept of SamenMarkt®, a participatory system in which multi-agent system technology enables distributed price negotiation, distribution and communication between producers, retailers and consumers. A SWOT analysis of the concept of SamenMarkt® is provided together with a research and development plan in which simulation and emulation create the basis for stakeholder- and participant involvement in the design process of a distributed digital market place. Further research aims to study how SamenMarkt® can provide a solution space for the emerging global food crises. At present, we are using agent-based modelling to simulate the present market and scenarios. The next step will be to build the actual agent-based platform for real-time negotiations and business intelligence

KEMNAD: A Knowledge Engineering Methodology for Negotiating Agent Development

Automated negotiation is widely applied in various domains. However, the development of such systems is a complex knowledge and software engineering task. So, a methodology there will be helpful. Unfortunately, none of existing methodologies can offer sufficient, detailed support for such system development. To remove this limitation, this paper develops a new methodology made up of: (1) a generic framework (architectural pattern) for the main task, and (2) a library of modular and reusable design pattern (templates) of subtasks. Thus, it is much easier to build a negotiating agent by assembling these standardised components rather than reinventing the wheel each time. Moreover, since these patterns are identified from a wide variety of existing negotiating agents(especially high impact ones), they can also improve the quality of the final systems developed. In addition, our methodology reveals what types of domain knowledge need to be input into the negotiating agents. This in turn provides a basis for developing techniques to acquire the domain knowledge from human users. This is important because negotiation agents act faithfully on the behalf of their human users and thus the relevant domain knowledge must be acquired from the human users. Finally, our methodology is validated with one high impact system

SOLACE: A framework for electronic negotiations

Copyright @ 2011 Walter de Gruyter GmbHMost existing frameworks for electronic negotiations today are tied to specific negotiation systems for which they were developed, preventing them from being applied to other negotiation scenarios. Thus, the evaluation of electronic negotiation systems is difficult as each one is based on a different framework. Additionally, each developer has to design a new framework for any system to be developed, leading to a ‘reinvention of the wheel’. This paper presents SOLACE—a generic framework for multi-issue negotiations, which can be applied to a variety of negotiation scenarios. In contrast with other frameworks for electronic negotiations, SOLACE supports hybrid systems in which the negotiation participants can be humans, agents or a combination of the two. By recognizing the importance of strategies in negotiations and incorporating a time attribute in negotiation proposals, SOLACE enhances existing approaches and provides a foundation for the flexible electronic negotiation systems of the future

Production/maintenance cooperative scheduling using multi-agents and fuzzy logic

Within companies, production is directly concerned with the manufacturing schedule, but other services like sales, maintenance, purchasing or workforce management should also have an influence on this schedule. These services often have together a hierarchical relationship, i.e. the leading function (most of the time sales or production) generates constraints defining the framework within which the other functions have to satisfy their own objectives. We show how the multi-agent paradigm, often used in scheduling for its ability to distribute decision-making, can also provide a framework for making several functions cooperate in the schedule performance. Production and maintenance have been chosen as an example: having common resources (the machines), their activities are actually often conflicting. We show how to use a fuzzy logic in order to model the temporal degrees of freedom of the two functions, and show that this approach may allow one to obtain a schedule that provides a better compromise between the satisfaction of the respective objectives of the two functions

Dispute Resolution Using Argumentation-Based Mediation

Mediation is a process, in which both parties agree to resolve their dispute by negotiating over alternative solutions presented by a mediator. In order to construct such solutions, mediation brings more information and knowledge, and, if possible, resources to the negotiation table. The contribution of this paper is the automated mediation machinery which does that. It presents an argumentation-based mediation approach that extends the logic-based approach to argumentation-based negotiation involving BDI agents. The paper describes the mediation algorithm. For comparison it illustrates the method with a case study used in an earlier work. It demonstrates how the computational mediator can deal with realistic situations in which the negotiating agents would otherwise fail due to lack of knowledge and/or resources.Comment: 6 page

Exploring synergies between farmers' livelihoods, forest conservation and social equity participatory simulations for creative negotiation in Thailand highlands

En dépit de l'usage croissant du concept de développement durable, les interactions entre ses trois piliers (environnementaux, économiques et sociaux) sont plus souvent pensées en termes de compromis qu'en termes de synergies. À partir d'une étude de cas sur un conflit autour de l'accès aux ressources foncières et forestières entre un parc national en cours d'établissement et deux villages dans les hautes terres du Nord de la Thaïlande, cet article montre que le concept de négociation intégrative peut être intéressant pour révéler des synergies potentielles entre la préservation de l'environnement, la subsistance des agriculteurs, et l'équité sociale. Dans cette étude de cas, des sessions participatives de simulations multi-agents ont favorisé l'émergence d'un mode de négociation créatif et intégratif entre différents types d'agriculteurs, des forestiers et des agents du parc national. Ces simulations ont permis aux différents protagonistes de reformuler le problème en jeu et de réaliser qu'ils avaient des intérêts en commun, notamment dans la limitation de la déforestation et la gestion des produits forestiers de collecte. (Résumé d'auteur

Multi agent system for negotiation in supply chain management

Supply chain management (SCM) is an emerging field that has commanded attention and support from the industrial community. Supply chain (SC) is defined as the chain linking each entity of the manufacturing and supply process from raw materials through to the end user. In order to increase supply chain effectiveness, minimize total cost, and reduce the bullwhip effect, integration and coordination of different systems and processes in the supply chain are required using information technology and effective communication and negotiation mechanism. To solve this problem, Agent technology provides the distributed environment a great promise of effective communication. The agent technology facilitates the integration of the entire supply chain as a networked system of independent echelon. In this article, a multi agent system has been developed to simulate a multi echelon supply chain. Each entity is modeled as one agent and their coordination lead to control inventories and minimize the total cost of SC by sharing information and forecasting knowledge and using negotiation mechanism. The result showed a reasonable reduction in total cost and bullwhip effect