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Stratum: A methodology for designing heuristic agent negotiation strategies.

Stratum: A methodology for designing heuristic agent negotiation strategies.
Stratum: A methodology for designing heuristic agent negotiation strategies.
Automated negotiation is a powerful (and sometimes essential) means for allocating resources among self-interested autonomous software agents. A key problem in building negotiating agents is the design of the negotiation strategy, which is used by an agent to decide its negotiation behaviour. In complex domains, there is no single, obvious optimal strategy. This has led to much work on designing heuristic strategies, where agent designers usually rely on intuition and experience. In this paper, we introduce STRATUM, a methodology for designing strategies for negotiating agents. The methodology provides a disciplined approach to analysing the negotiation environment and designing strategies in light of agent capabilities, and acts as a bridge between theoretical studies of automated negotiation and the software engineering of negotiation applications. We illustrate the application of the methodology by characterising some strategies for the Trading Agent Competition and for argumentation-based negotiation.
489-527
Rahwan, I.
5005d1d4-3016-40ed-be63-562dacf2af2c
Sonenburg, L.
737a907b-b4bd-4034-aa53-729d052bf894
Jennings, N. R.
ab3d94cc-247c-4545-9d1e-65873d6cdb30
McBurney, P.
68bf1fc1-9bea-4b01-887d-d7a63fd23baf
Rahwan, I.
5005d1d4-3016-40ed-be63-562dacf2af2c
Sonenburg, L.
737a907b-b4bd-4034-aa53-729d052bf894
Jennings, N. R.
ab3d94cc-247c-4545-9d1e-65873d6cdb30
McBurney, P.
68bf1fc1-9bea-4b01-887d-d7a63fd23baf

Rahwan, I., Sonenburg, L., Jennings, N. R. and McBurney, P. (2007) Stratum: A methodology for designing heuristic agent negotiation strategies. International Journal of Applied Artificial Intelligence, 21 (6), 489-527.

Record type: Article

Abstract

Automated negotiation is a powerful (and sometimes essential) means for allocating resources among self-interested autonomous software agents. A key problem in building negotiating agents is the design of the negotiation strategy, which is used by an agent to decide its negotiation behaviour. In complex domains, there is no single, obvious optimal strategy. This has led to much work on designing heuristic strategies, where agent designers usually rely on intuition and experience. In this paper, we introduce STRATUM, a methodology for designing strategies for negotiating agents. The methodology provides a disciplined approach to analysing the negotiation environment and designing strategies in light of agent capabilities, and acts as a bridge between theoretical studies of automated negotiation and the software engineering of negotiation applications. We illustrate the application of the methodology by characterising some strategies for the Trading Agent Competition and for argumentation-based negotiation.

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Published date: 2007
Organisations: Agents, Interactions & Complexity

Identifiers

Local EPrints ID: 263073
URI: http://eprints.soton.ac.uk/id/eprint/263073
PURE UUID: 569c7593-d104-4c34-a1b5-bec12366951a

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Date deposited: 06 Oct 2006
Last modified: 14 Mar 2024 07:24

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Contributors

Author: I. Rahwan
Author: L. Sonenburg
Author: N. R. Jennings
Author: P. McBurney

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