Formal Account of Sequential Decision-Making in a Co-Operative Setting

It is typical for an autonomous agent to make decisions in the presence of other agents who respond, react to his action's and undertake actions independently of the agent's decisions. Also, the decision environment is often dynamic and certain changes cannot be forseen. This requires the agent to have an ability to recognize and interpret the situation he faces. The agent needs additional abilities to evaluate the implemented decisions, assess the actions of the others and determine the representation of his current decision problem. This paper gives a formal account of an agent who has specific cognitive and representational abilities required to make sequential decisions in co-operative settings. The restructurable modelling methodology, presented here, has been implemented in the Negoplan system and applied to the simulation, analysis and support of negotiations, patient diagnosis and treatment, investment scenario development, planning and distributed decision-making.