In this article, an agent-based negotiation model for negotiation teams that negotiate a deal with an opponent is presented. Agent-based negotiation teams are groups of agents that join together as a single negotiation party because they share an interest that is related to the negotiation process. The model relies on a trusted mediator that coordinates and helps team members in the decisions that they have to take during the negotiation process: which offer is sent to the opponent, and whether the offers received from the opponent are accepted. The main strength of the proposed negotiation model is the fact that it guarantees unanimity within team decisions since decisions report a utility to team members that is greater than or equal to their aspiration levels at each negotiation round. This work analyzes how unanimous decisions are taken within the team and the robustness of the model against different types of manipulations. An empirical evaluation is also performed to study the impact of the different parameters of the model.
In the last few years, there has been growing interest in multiagent systems as a support for complex and distributed systems. Among these complex systems, there is special interest in scenarios where multiple agents, with possibly conflicting goals, cooperate with each other to reach their own goals. The benefits of cooperation and coordination are well known, and, as stated by Klein @cite_15 , computer systems may help us to identify and apply the appropriate coordination mechanism. Due to the inherent conflict among agents, techniques that allow agents to solve their own conflicts and cooperate are needed. This need is what has given birth to a group of technologies which have recently been referred to as agreement technologies @cite_25 . Trust and reputation @cite_6 , norms @cite_8 , agent organizations @cite_16 @cite_4 , argumentation @cite_17 @cite_2 and automated negotiation @cite_27 @cite_22 are part of the core that makes up this new family of technologies.
@cite_4 @cite_22 @cite_8 @cite_6 @cite_27 @cite_2 @cite_15 @cite_16 @cite_25 @cite_17
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Coordination can be required whenever multiple agents plan to achieve their individual goals independently, but might mutually benefit by coordinating their plans to avoid working at cross purposes or duplicating effort. Although variations of such problems have been studied in the literature, there is as yet no agreement over a general characterization of them. In this paper, we formally define a common coordination problem subclass, which we call the Multiagent Plan Coordination Problem, that is rich enough to represent a wide variety of multiagent coordination problems. We then describe a general framework that extends the partial-order, causal-link plan representation to the multiagent case, and that treats coordination as a form of iterative repair of plan flaws between agents. We show that this algorithmic formulation can scale to the multiagent case better than can a straightforward application of the existing plan coordination techniques, highlighting fundamental differences between our algorithmic framework and these earlier approaches. We then examine whether and how the Multiagent Plan Coordination Problem can be cast as a Distributed Constraint Optimization Problem (DCOP). We do so using ADOPT, a state-of-the-art system that can solve DCOPs in an asynchronous, parallel manner using local communication between individual computational agents. We conclude with a discussion of possible extensions of our work. Distributed Artificial Intelligence systems, in which multiple agents interact to improve their individual performance and to enhance the system’s overall utility, are becoming an increasingly pervasive means of conceptualising a diverse range of applications. As the discipline matures, researchers are beginning to strive for the underlying theories and principles which guide the central processes of coordination and cooperation. Here agent communities are modelled using a distributed goal search formalism and it is argued that commitments (pledges to undertake a specified course of action) and conventions (means of monitoring commitments in changing circumstances) are the foundation of coordination in multi-agent systems. An analysis of existing coordination models which use concepts akin to commitments and conventions is undertaken before a new unifying framework is presented. Finally a number of prominent coordination techniques which do not explicitly involve commitments or conventions are reformulated in these terms to demonstrate their compliance with the central hypothesis of this paper. Recent years have seen an increase in the application of ideas from the social sciences to computational systems. Nowhere has this been more pronounced than in the domain of multiagent systems. Because multiagent systems are composed of multiple individual agents interacting with each other many parallels can be drawn to human and animal societies. One of the main challenges currently faced in multiagent systems research is that of social control. In particular, how can open multiagent systems be configured and organized given their constantly changing structure? One leading solution is to employ the use of social norms. In human societies, social norms are essential to regulation, coordination, and cooperation. The current trend of thinking is that these same principles can be applied to agent societies, of which multiagent systems are one type. In this article, we provide an introduction to and present a holistic viewpoint of the state of normative computing (computational solutions that employ ideas based on social norms.) To accomplish this, we (1) introduce social norms and their application to agent-based systems; (2) identify and describe a normative process abstracted from the existing research; and (3) discuss future directions for research in normative multiagent computing. The intent of this paper is to introduce new researchers to the ideas that underlie normative computing and survey the existing state of the art, as well as provide direction for future research. Coordination of agent activities is a key problem in multiagent systems. Set in a larger decision theoretic context, the existence of coordination problems leads to difficulty in evaluating the utility of a situation. This in turn makes defining optimal policies for sequential decision processes problematic. We propose a method for solving sequential multi-agent decision problems by allowing agents to reason explicitly about specific coordination mechanisms. We define an extension of value iteration in which the system's state space is augmented with the state of the coordination mechanism adopted, allowing agents to reason about the short and long term prospects for coordination, the long term consequences of (mis)coordination, and make decisions to engage or avoid coordination problems based on expected value. We also illustrate the benefits of mechanism generalization.