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Acceptance conditions in automated negotiation

Acceptance conditions in automated negotiation
Acceptance conditions in automated negotiation
In every negotiation with a deadline, one of the negotiating parties has to accept an offer to avoid a break off. A break off is usually an undesirable outcome for both parties, therefore it is important that a negotiator employs a proficient mechanism to decide under which conditions to accept. When designing such conditions one is faced with the acceptance dilemma: accepting the current offer may be suboptimal, as better offers may still be presented. On the other hand, accepting too late may prevent an agreement from being reached, resulting in a break off with no gain for either party. Motivated by the challenges of bilateral negotiations between automated agents and by the results and insights of the automated negotiating agents competition (ANAC), we classify and compare state-of-the-art generic acceptance conditions. We focus on decoupled acceptance conditions, i.e. conditions that do not depend on the bidding strategy that is used. We performed extensive experiments to compare the performance of acceptance conditions in combination with a broad range of bidding strategies and negotiation domains. Furthermore we propose new acceptance conditions and we demonstrate that they outperform the other conditions that we study. In particular, it is shown that they outperform the standard acceptance condition of comparing the current offer with the offer the agent is ready to send out. We also provide insight in to why some conditions work better than others and investigate correlations between the properties of the negotiation environment and the efficacy of acceptance conditions
9783642307362
1860-949X
435
95-111
Springer
Baarslag, Tim
a7c541d8-8141-467b-a08c-7a81cd69920e
Hindriks, Koen
37537aff-8c5e-420e-b424-1cb0c26aa7d7
Jonker, Catholijn
492a7c03-c206-4fad-9a9c-a156a96c4245
Ito, Takayuki
Zhang, Minjie
Robu, Valentin
Matsuo, Tokuro
Baarslag, Tim
a7c541d8-8141-467b-a08c-7a81cd69920e
Hindriks, Koen
37537aff-8c5e-420e-b424-1cb0c26aa7d7
Jonker, Catholijn
492a7c03-c206-4fad-9a9c-a156a96c4245
Ito, Takayuki
Zhang, Minjie
Robu, Valentin
Matsuo, Tokuro

Baarslag, Tim, Hindriks, Koen and Jonker, Catholijn (2013) Acceptance conditions in automated negotiation. In, Ito, Takayuki, Zhang, Minjie, Robu, Valentin and Matsuo, Tokuro (eds.) Complex Automated Negotiations: Theories, Models, and Software Competitions. (Studies in Computational Intelligence, 435) Heidelberg, DE. Springer, pp. 95-111. (doi:10.1007/978-3-642-30737-9_6).

Record type: Book Section

Abstract

In every negotiation with a deadline, one of the negotiating parties has to accept an offer to avoid a break off. A break off is usually an undesirable outcome for both parties, therefore it is important that a negotiator employs a proficient mechanism to decide under which conditions to accept. When designing such conditions one is faced with the acceptance dilemma: accepting the current offer may be suboptimal, as better offers may still be presented. On the other hand, accepting too late may prevent an agreement from being reached, resulting in a break off with no gain for either party. Motivated by the challenges of bilateral negotiations between automated agents and by the results and insights of the automated negotiating agents competition (ANAC), we classify and compare state-of-the-art generic acceptance conditions. We focus on decoupled acceptance conditions, i.e. conditions that do not depend on the bidding strategy that is used. We performed extensive experiments to compare the performance of acceptance conditions in combination with a broad range of bidding strategies and negotiation domains. Furthermore we propose new acceptance conditions and we demonstrate that they outperform the other conditions that we study. In particular, it is shown that they outperform the standard acceptance condition of comparing the current offer with the offer the agent is ready to send out. We also provide insight in to why some conditions work better than others and investigate correlations between the properties of the negotiation environment and the efficacy of acceptance conditions

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Published date: 2013
Organisations: Agents, Interactions & Complexity

Identifiers

Local EPrints ID: 373214
URI: http://eprints.soton.ac.uk/id/eprint/373214
ISBN: 9783642307362
ISSN: 1860-949X
PURE UUID: b028a2dd-c1bf-4026-ba36-c2e0b7672964
ORCID for Tim Baarslag: ORCID iD orcid.org/0000-0002-1662-3910

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Date deposited: 12 Jan 2015 14:10
Last modified: 14 Mar 2024 18:50

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Contributors

Author: Tim Baarslag ORCID iD
Author: Koen Hindriks
Author: Catholijn Jonker
Editor: Takayuki Ito
Editor: Minjie Zhang
Editor: Valentin Robu
Editor: Tokuro Matsuo

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