Decision Processes in Agent-Based Automated Contracting

The Magnet system meets many of the challenges of modeling decision making for customer agents in automated contract negotiation. In order to model decision making in the uncertain environment of contract negotiation, we use the Expected Utility Theory. We describe that theory, followed by more detailed descriptions of the customer agents' key decision-making processes and our search algorithm. First, we offer an overview of the Magnet environment.

[1]  Frederick S. Hillier,et al.  Introduction of Operations Research , 1967 .

[2]  Victor Lesser,et al.  Negotiation among self-interested computationally limited agents , 1996 .

[3]  Tuomas Sandholm,et al.  Approaches to winner determination in combinatorial auctions , 2000, Decis. Support Syst..

[4]  Ronald M. Harstad,et al.  Computationally Manageable Combinational Auctions , 1998 .

[5]  Louis Eeckhoudt,et al.  Risk: Evaluation, Management and Sharing , 1996 .

[6]  Maria L. Gini,et al.  A market architecture for multi-agent contracting , 1998, AGENTS '98.

[7]  Arne Andersson,et al.  Integer programming for combinatorial auction winner determination , 2000, Proceedings Fourth International Conference on MultiAgent Systems.

[8]  David W. Hildum,et al.  MASCOT: An Agent-based Architecture for Coordinated Mixed-Initiative Supply Chain Planning and Scheduling , 1999 .

[9]  Tapan Biswas Decision-Making under Uncertainty , 1997 .

[10]  George A. Bekey,et al.  On autonomous robots , 1998, The Knowledge Engineering Review.

[11]  Maria L. Gini,et al.  Mixed-initiative decision support in agent-based automated contracting , 2000, AGENTS '00.

[12]  Yoav Shoham,et al.  Taming the Computational Complexity of Combinatorial Auctions: Optimal and Approximate Approaches , 1999, IJCAI.

[13]  Michael P. Wellman,et al.  Market-aware agents for a multiagent world , 1998, Robotics Auton. Syst..

[14]  Pattie Maes,et al.  Agent-mediated Electronic Commerce : A Survey , 1998 .

[15]  Nicholas R. Jennings,et al.  Negotiation decision functions for autonomous agents , 1998, Robotics Auton. Syst..

[16]  C. Reeves Modern heuristic techniques for combinatorial problems , 1993 .

[17]  Michael P. Wellman,et al.  The Michigan Internet AuctionBot: a configurable auction server for human and software agents , 1998, AGENTS '98.

[18]  Maria L. Gini,et al.  Bid Selection Strategies for Multi-agent Contracting in the Presence of Scheduling Constraints , 1999, Agent Mediated Electronic Commerce.

[19]  Katia P. Sycara,et al.  The RETSINA multiagent system (video session): towards integrating planning, execution and information gathering , 1998, AGENTS '98.

[20]  Katia Sycara,et al.  The RETSINA Multiagnet System: Towards Integrating Planning, Execution and Information Gathering. , 1998 .

[21]  Maria L. Gini,et al.  Magma: An Agent Based Virtual Market for Electronic Commerce , 1997, Appl. Artif. Intell..

[22]  Noam Nisan,et al.  Bidding and allocation in combinatorial auctions , 2000, EC '00.