10289458
Design of supplier agents for an auction-based market
We are interested in supporting multi-agent contracting in which customer agents solicit the resources and capabilities of other self-interested supplier agents in order to accomplish their goals. Goals may involve the execution of multi-step tasks in which different tasks are contracted out to different suppliers. 
 
In this paper we focus on the design of supplier agents. The agents are designed to operate in the context of the MAGNET (Multi AGent NEgotiation Testbed) system, but the design could easily be adapted to other situations in which agents interact through a market infrastructure. 
 
MAGNET supplier agents can register their capabilities with the market, be notified of open and relevant requests for quotations, and submit bids that specify which tasks they are able to undertake, when they are available to perform those tasks, and at what price. Supplier agents attempt to maximize the value of their resources. 
 
The paper describes the detailed design of supplier agents and presents preliminary experimental results.
14464726
Bidtree Ordering in IDA* Combinatorial Auction Winner-Determination with Side Constraints
We extend Sandholm's bidtree-based IDA* algorithm for combinatorial auction winner determination to deal with negotiation over tasks with precedence constraints. We evaluate its performance, and show that the order of items in the bidtree has a major impact on performance. Specifically, performance is enhanced if the items with the largest numbers of bids are at the top of the bidtree. This is due to the fact that the effective branching factor in the search tree is controlled by the number of bids returned from a query to the bidtree, which in turn is strongly related to its construction.
2112426
Evaluating risk: flexibility and feasibility in multi-agent contracting
In an automated contracting environment, where a contractor agent must negotiate with other self-interested supplier agents in order to execute its plans, there is a tradeoff between giving the suppliers sufficient flexibility to incorporate the requirements of the contractor’s call-for-bids into their own resource schedules, and ensuring the contractor that any bids received can be composed into a feasible plan. We introduce a bid evaluation process that incorporates cost, task coverage, temporal feasibility, and risk estimation. Using this evaluation process, we describe an empirical study of the tradeoffs between flexibility, plan feasibility, and cost in the context of our MAGNET multi-agent contracting market infrastructure.
15718873
A predictive empirical model for pricing and resource allocation decisions
We present a semi-parametric model that describes pricing behaviors in a market environment, and we show how that model can be used to guide resource allocation and pricing decisions in an autonomous trading agent. We validate our model by presenting experimental results obtained in the Trading Agent Competition for Supply Chain Management.
9735857
Scheduling tasks with precedence constraints to solicit desirable bid combinations
In our previous research we suggested an approach to maximizing agents preferences over schedules of multiple tasks with temporal and precedence constraints. The proposed approach is based on Expected Utility Theory. In this paper we address two mutually dependent questions: (a) what are the properties of the problem domain that can facilitate efficient maximization algorithms, and (b) what criteria determine attractiveness of one or another potential solution to the agent. We discuss different ways of exploring the problem domain. We show that naive optimization approaches often fail to find solutions for risk-averse agents and propose ways of using properties of the domain to improve upon naive approaches.
2312899
Risk and expectations in a-priori time allocation in multi-agent contracting
In related research we have proposed a market architecture for multi-agent contracting and we have implemented prototypes of both the market architecture and the agents in a system called MAGNET. A customer agent in MAGNET solicits bids for the execution of multi-step plans, in which tasks have precedence and time constraints, by posting a Request for Quotes to the market. The Request for Quotes needs to include for each task its precedence constraints and a time window. In this paper, we study the problem of optimizing the time windows in the Requests for Quotes. Our approach is to use the Expected Utility Theory to reduce the likelihood of receiving unattractive bids, while maximizing the number of bids that are likely to be included in the winning bundle. We describe the model, illustrate its operation and properties, and discuss what assumptions are required for its successful integration into MAGNET or other multi-agent contracting systems.
114125959
Documenting protocols in CLOS: keeping the promise of reuse
59716230
Outline or bitmap type
34266504
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