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

Can models of agents be transferred between different areas?

One of the main reasons for the sustained activity and interest in the field of agent-based systems, apart from the obvious recognition of its value as a natural and intuitive way of understanding the world, is its reach into very many different and distinct fields of investigation. Indeed, the notions of agents and multi-agent systems are relevant to fields ranging from economics to robotics, in contributing to the foundations of the field, being influenced by ongoing research, and in providing many domains of application. While these various disciplines constitute a rich and diverse environment for agent research, the way in which they may have been linked by it is a much less considered issue. The purpose of this panel was to examine just this concern, in the relationships between different areas that have resulted from agent research. Informed by the experience of the participants in the areas of robotics, social simulation, economics, computer science and artificial intelligence, the discussion was lively and sometimes heated

Social Embeddedness and Agent Development

Two different reasons for using agents are distinguished: the `engineering' perspective and the `social simulation' perspective. It is argued that this entails some differences in approach. In particular the former will want to prevent unpredictable emergent features of their agent populations whilst the later will want to use simulation to study precisely this phenomena. A concept of `social embeddedness' is explicated which neatly distinguishes the two approaches. It is argued that such embedding in a society is an essential feature of being a truly social agent. This has the consequence that such agents will not sit well within an `engineering' methodology

Flexible Multi-Agent Protocols

In this paper we de ne a novel technique for the speci cation of agent protocols in Multi-Agent-Systems. This technique addresses a number of shortcomings of previous Electronic Institution based speci cations. In particular, we relax the static speci cation of agent protocols as statebased diagrams and allow protocols to be de ned and disseminated in a exible manner during agent interaction. Our exible speci cation is derived from process algebra and thus forms a sound basis for the veri cation of such systems

Community care system design and development with AUML

An approach to the development of an appropriate agent environment is described in which software researchers collaborate with environment builders to enhance the levels of cooperation and support provided within an integrated agent-oriented community system. Agent-oriented Unified Modelling Language (AUML) is a practical approach to the analysis, design, implementation and management of such a software agent system, whilst providing the power and expressiveness necessary to support the specification, design and organisation of a health care service. This paper describes the background of agent-based health care and the fundamental concepts of Agentoriented UML and outlines how this refreshing approach can be used in the analysis, design, development and organization of agent-based community health care systems. Our approach to building agent-oriented software development solutions emphasizes the importance of AUML as a fundamental initial step in producing agent-based architectures and applications. This approach aims to present an effective schedule and methodology for an agent software development process, by addressing the complex agent environments decomposition, abstraction, organization and software development process activities characteristics, whilst reducing the complexity of the complex agent systems' design and development by using and exploiting AUML's productivity potential

Delegation Mechanisms for Agent Architectural Design

Multi-agent Systems (MAS) are now being considered a promising architectural approach for designing collaborative information systems. In such a perspective, the concept of delegation has often been considered as a key concept for modeling cooperative behavior in MAS. However, despite considerable work on delegation mechanisms in MAS, few research efforts have aimed at truly defining a delegation model for designing MAS. This paper deals with this issue in defining the foundations for a delegation model aimed to help developers during the phase of designing collaborative MAS

Improvement of PRIMKOPTI Resilience Business with The Method of Interpretive Structural Modelling (ISM)

PRIMKOPTI is having difficulty in channelling the soybean for its members after the government policy about the elimination of soybean import by Bulog is issued. The magnitude of the competition and pressure of new entrants/private sector become greater mainly as the soybean importer company also become the hampered factor of development of PRIMKOPTI. It is indicated that PRIMKOPTI has serious problem, even tend to be crisis so that there is necessary to have the attempts to restore the continuity of their business. The aims of this research are 1) To analyze what factors influencing the business continuance and its resilience, and 2) To make the institutional development model of “Resilience Business” in fulfilling the requirement of vegetable for PRIMKOPTI. This research uses the methodology of system approach with the descriptive analysis and the institutional analysis with ISM. The institutional analysis used is the interpretative structural modeling (ISM). The result of research showed that the performance of PRIMKOPTI as a whole is still not optimal so that it was necessary to conduct the increase of performance and the revamping. Political issues, regulatory and economic stability of the nation are the dominant factors which can influence the continuity and the resilience of PRIMKOPTI. Institutionally, the role of PRIMKOPTI should get strong support and protection from Government, mainly from Coordinating Minister of Economy and State Ministry of Cooperative and UKM as the driver power. Then getting support from Ministry of Technique related and other institutions. For the implementation of the real business, it is necessary to have support and direct relation with the financial institution and importer so that its operational can run well. Keywords: PRIMKOPTI, resilience business, interpretive structural modelling (ISM), tempeh-tof