A Negotiation Formal Model for Cooperating Agents

The work presented in this paper constitutes a part of a global approach aiming at defining the theoretical foundations of a platform for designing and implementing Multi-Agents Systems. This paper is primarily centered around the study of the negotiation as a technique needed to support the cooperative activity within this kind of systems. Our contribution is mainly about the definition of formal models for negotiation and negotiating agent. These models enable to specify the relations between the concepts of plans, plan proposals and resource allocations, on the one hand, and concepts of roles, knowledge, beliefs and capabilities, on the other hand.