Negotiation and Argumentation in Multi-Agent Systems: Fundamentals, Theories, Systems and Applications

In this chapter we elaborate on the specification and exploitation of a software agent-based Electronic Institution, embedding both a Normative Environment and a Computational Trust service which, when used in tandem, lead to an enhanced process of selection of potential business partners and enable automatic contract negotiation. We introduce a formalization of a Normative Environment, which accommodates the establishment of e-contracts and provides a contract monitoring facility. Contracts are established and enacted by contractual partners previously selected through an automatic negotiation process. While monitoring contracts at run-time, the Normative Environment makes use of a reporting mechanism to inform relevant contract enactment events to interested parties. In our work, we benefit from this reporting function by exploiting it as an input to a computational trust mechanism. We also present the built-in Computational Trust service, a key element of the Electronic Institution. This service includes two main components: the Contractual Evidences Manager, which generates contractual evidences from contract enactment events; and the Trust Aggregation Engine, a situation-aware trust Corresponding author: Joana Urbano Telephone: +351 22 508 14 00 Fax: +351 22 508 14 40 F. Lopes (Ed.) and H. Coelho (Co-ed.), Negotiation and Argumentation in MAS All rights reserved. Copyright © 2013 by Bentham Science Publishers Ltd. 5

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