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

Automated Federation Of Virtual Organization In Grid Using Select, Match, Negotiate And Expand (SMNE) Protocol [QA76.9.C58 C518 2008 f rb].

Sekelompok sumber perkomputeran yang teragih dan berlainan jenis dalam persekitaran grid akan membentuk organisasi maya dan berkongsi sumber komputer. A group of distributed and heterogeneous resources in a grid environment may form a Virtual Organization (VO) to enable resource sharing

Design choices for agent-based control of AGVs in the dough making process

In this paper we consider a multi-agent system (MAS) for the logistics control of Automatic Guided Vehicles (AGVs) that are used in the dough making process at an industrial bakery. Here, logistics control refers to constructing robust schedules for all transportation jobs. The paper discusses how alternative MAS designs can be developed and compared using cost, frequency of messages between agents, and computation time for evaluating control rules as performance indicators. Qualitative design guidelines turn out to be insufficient to select the best agent architecture. Therefore, we also use simulation to support decision making, where we use real-life data from the bakery to evaluate several alternative designs. We find that architectures in which line agents initiate allocation of transportation jobs, and AGV agents schedule multiple jobs in advance, perform best. We conclude by discussing the benefits of our MAS systems design approach for real-life applications

Determining Successful Negotiation Strategies: The Evolution of Intelligent Agents

Due to the desire of almost all departments of business organizations to be interconnected and to make data accessible at any time and any place, more and more multi-agent systems are applied to business management. As numerous agents are roaming through the Internet, they compete for the limited resource to achieve their goal. In the end, some of them will succeed, while the others will fail. However, when agents are initially created, they have little knowledge and experience with relatively lower capability. They should also strive to adapt themselves to the changing environment. It is advantageous if they have the ability to learn and evolve. This paper addresses evolution of intelligent agents in virtual enterprises. Agent fitness and fuzzy multi-criteria decision-making approach are proposed as evolution mechanisms, and fuzzy soft goal is introduced to facilitate the evolution process. Genetic programming operators are employed to restructure agents in the proposed multi-agent evolution cycle. We conduct a series of experiments to determine the most successful strategies and to see how and when these strategies evolve depending on the context and negotiation stance of the agent’s opponent

Prenegotiation and actual negotiation in electricity markets

Software agents have been successfully used in a vast range of applications. Agents have been gradually designed to act in open environments and to manage their cooperative and competitive interactions with other agents present in their environment. In a Multi-agent System (MAS), involving different agents operating individually to meet their design goals, conflict will be inevitable — it is not necessarily bad or good, but it is inevitable. Conflict is the focal point of interaction, i.e. the driving force of negotiation. Furthermore, conflict is the element that connects the individual and social behavior of agents. Software tools based on intelligent agents with negotiating capabilities have became important and pervasive. Particularly, there is a growing demand to develop MAS featuring bilateral contracts in liberalized Electricity Markets (EMs). This dissertation addresses, at least in part, this challenge by presenting the computational tool NSEM – Negotiation Simulator for Electricity Markets. NSEM features Belief-Desire-Intention agents able to effectively plan actions, manage conflicts, and trade proposals to reach mutually beneficial agreements. NSEM focuses on the preliminary activities that should come before negotiation, usually referred to as prenegotiation. These activities include the definition of the issues at stake, their prioritization, and the selection of an appropriate protocol and effective strategies. This dissertation presents details of NSEM’s implementation and test. NSEM was developed with the JAVA programming language and the JADE platform. Its test was performed by using a case study, featuring prenegotiation and actual negotiation of bilateral contracts in liberalized EMs.A tecnologia baseada em agentes computacionais autónomos tem vindo a ser utilizada com sucesso numa vasta gama de aplicações. Num Sistema Multi-agente (SMA), composto por diversos agentes atuando individualmente para alcançarr os seus objectivos de projecto, os conflitos são inevitáveis. Os conflitos constituem o elemento que liga o comportamento individual e social dos agentes, sendo normalmente a força motriz da negociação. O desenvolvimento de agentes com capacidade negocial sofreu avanços significativos ao longo dos últimos anos. Estes agentes apresentam diversas vantagens relativamente aos negociadores humanos, sendo de realçar a capacidade de obterem acordos benéficos para todas as partes envolvidas na negociação. Nesta perspectiva, salienta-se a procura crescente de SMAs para simular a contratação bilateral de energia em mercados liberalizados. Esta dissertação tenta responder a este desafio através do desenvolvimento da ferramenta computacional NSEM: “Negotiation Simulator for Electricity Markets”. NSEM permite criar agentes constituídos pelas atitudes mentais de crença, desejo e intenção, capazes de planear ações de forma efectiva, gerir conflitos, e negociar acordos mutualmente beneficiáveis. NSEM coloca a ênfase no conjunto de atividades preliminares a realizar antes da negociação, referido usualmente como pré-negociação. Estas atividades incluem a definição dos itens a negociar, as suas prioridades, a escolha de um protocolo apropriado, e a seleção de estratégias efetivas. Esta dissertação ao apresenta detalhes da implementação e teste do NSEM. A implementação foi efetuada através do Java e do JADE. O teste foi realizado através do desenvolvimento de um caso de estudo referente à contratação bilateral de energia em mercados de eletricidade liberalizados

Simulator Development - Annual Report Year 3

This document describes the progress of the simulator development with in the third year of the CATNETS project. The refinement of the simulator as well as a detailed guide to conducting simulations is presented. --Grid Computing

Agents enacting social roles: balancing formal structure and practical rationality in MAS design

Der Soziologe Pierre Bourdieu zeigt die feine und häufig ignorierte Unterscheidung zwischen theoretischer Rationalität und der 'Logik der Praxis' auf. Diese Differenz, so die Annahme der Autoren, ist sowohl bei dem Versuch, menschliche Organisationen mit Robustheit und Flexibilität auszustatten, als auch bei jeder Bemühung, Informationssysteme auf der Basis von Mechanismen organisatorischer Koordination zu modellieren, zu berücksichtigen. Im INKA-Projekt, einem Bestandteil des deutschen Forschungsprogramms Sozionik, bildet diese Ansicht den Ausgangspunkt. Computergesteuerte Agenten, die sich selbst koordinieren und in einer Weise eigenständig agieren, ahmen im Prinzip menschliche Akteure in organisatorischen Umgebungen nach. Dabei müssen sie mit der Spannung zurechtkommen, die aus den formalen vorgegeben Beschreibungen der Organisation und den strukturierten Erwartungen, welche sich von den täglichen Interaktionen auf dem Level der Produktionsstätten ableiten, resultiert. In der Soziologie besteht eine Möglichkeit, diese Spannung in der Rollentheorie zu konzeptionieren, die auf verschiedene Formen der Darstellung von formalen Rollenbeschreibungen und praktischen Rollen ausgerichtet ist. Außerdem ist gemäß der Organisationstheorie und empirischen Untersuchungen bekannt, dass in der realen Welt die täglichen Aus- und Verhandlungen der Arbeitnehmer eine Form des Arbeitshandelns darstellen. Basierend auf diesen Betrachtungen orientiert sich das INKA-Projekt an zwei Hauptzielen: (1) Modellierung und Implementierung eines technischen Systems, in dem die Agenten fähig sind, sich auf der Basis von praktischen Rollen mittels Verhandlung selbständig zu koordinieren; (2) Entwicklung einer Annäherung an die Erforschung hybrider Sozialität, die bei dem Eintritt solcher Agenten in menschliche Organisationen entsteht. Die Ausführungen beginnen mit einer kurzen Diskussion der konzeptionellen Probleme, die auftreten, wenn Computerprogramme auf praktische Relationen oder auf soziologische Konzepte von praktischen Modalitäten der Interaktion, des Problemlösens und Planens zugeschnitten sind. Dies führt zu der Formulierung von drei generellen Herausforderungen innerhalb des Sozionik-Programms. Im Anschluss wird in einige Details der soziologisch basierten Schaffung von praktischen Rollen und aushandelnden Agenten eingeführt. Es folgt die Darstellung der Grundstruktur für die entsprechende MAS-Architektur. Dann werden zwei generelle Probleme behandelt, die bei dem derzeitigen Entwicklungsstand des vorgestellten Projekts und nach Ansicht der Autoren im gesamten Sozionik-Programm auftreten. Es wird ein integrierter Ansatz vorgeschlagen, der alle Aktivitäten in Sozionik-Systemen in einer systematischen Weise korreliert. Des Weiteren wird ein methodisches Instrument zur Erforschung der Hybridisierung präsentiert. Der Text schließt mit der Darstellung einiger konzeptioneller Erweiterungen und zukünftiger Arbeitsschritte. (ICGÜbers)Sociologist Pierre Bourdieu pointed out the subtle and often ignored difference between theoretical rationality and the 'logic of practice'. This difference, we will argue, has to be taken in account when trying to capture the robustness and flexibility of human organizations, and is especially important for any effort to model information systems on mechanisms of organizational coordination. In the INKA-project, part of the German Socionics program, we took this insight as our very starting point. Computational agents that 'act' and coordinate themselves in a way that at least mimics in principle human actors in organizational environments have to cope with the tension between the formal descriptions given by the organization at large and the structured expectations that derive from their daily interactions on the shop-floor level. In sociology one way of conceptualizing this tension is role theory, focusing on the different forms of enactment of formal role descriptions and practical roles. Furthermore, from organizational theory and empirical investigations we know that in the 'real world' daily negotiations by the employees themselves are one way of working around the incoherences of formal prescriptions, job descriptions and work schedules. Based on these considerations the INKA-project is oriented by two main objectives: To model and implement a technical system in which the agents are capable of coordinating themselves via negotiating on the basis of practical roles, and to develop an approach for the investigation of hybrid sociality that emerges if those agents are re-entered into human organizations. The contribution begins with a brief discussion of the conceptual problems that occur if computer programs are to be modeled on practical relations or on sociological concepts of practical modes of interaction, problem solving and planning; this leads us to the formulation of three general challenges within the Socionics program (2). In the next part we introduce in some detail our sociologically grounded modeling of practical roles and negotiating agents (3), and our framework for a corresponding MAS-architecture (4). Then we turn to two general issues, that came up at the present state of development in our project - and, as we assume, in the entire Socionics program. We propose an integrated approach that correlates all activities in Socionic systems development in a systematic way (5), and we present a methodological instrument for the investigation of hybridization (6). We conclude by sketching some conceptual extensions and further working steps (7)

An Implementation Model of a Declarative Framework for Automated Negotiation

The subject of automated negotiations has received a lot of attention in the Multi-Agent Systems (MAS) research community. Most work in this field on the auction design space, on its parametrization and on mechanisms for specific types of auctions. One of the problems that have been recently addressed consists in developing a generic negotiation protocol (GNP) capable of governing the interaction between agents that participate in any type of auction. Though much has been said on this matter, the current results stop at the XML representation of specific negotiation mechanisms. In this paper we propose a declarative approach for specifying a generic auction protocol by using Belief-Desire-Intention (BDI) agents and the Jason programming language to represent the entities that communicate in an auction. In order to validate the claim on the generality of the proposed approach we have used the GNP to model two negotiation mechanisms: one for the English auction and one for the Dutch auction

Agents for educational games and simulations

This book consists mainly of revised papers that were presented at the Agents for Educational Games and Simulation (AEGS) workshop held on May 2, 2011, as part of the Autonomous Agents and MultiAgent Systems (AAMAS) conference in Taipei, Taiwan. The 12 full papers presented were carefully reviewed and selected from various submissions. The papers are organized topical sections on middleware applications, dialogues and learning, adaption and convergence, and agent applications