Decoupling Negotiating Agents to Explore the Space of Negotiation Strategies

Every year, automated negotiation agents are improving on various domains. However, given a set of negotiation agents, current methods allow to determine which strategy is best in terms of utility, but not so much the reason of success. In order to study the performance of the individual elements of a negotiation strategy, we introduce an architecture that distinguishes three components which together constitute a negotiation strategy: the bidding strategy, the opponent model, and the acceptance condition. Our contribution to the field of bilateral negotiation is threefold: first, we show that existing state of the art agents are compatible with this architecture; second, as an application of our architecture, we systematically explore the space of possible strategies by recombining different strategy components; finally, we briefly review how the BOA architecture has been recently applied to evaluate the performance of strategy components and create novel negotiation strategies that outperform the state of the art.

[1]  Sarit Kraus,et al.  GENIUS: AN INTEGRATED ENVIRONMENT FOR SUPPORTING THE DESIGN OF GENERIC AUTOMATED NEGOTIATORS , 2012, Comput. Intell..

[2]  Miltiades E. Anagnostou,et al.  Multi-modal Opponent Behaviour Prognosis in E-Negotiations , 2011, IWANN.

[3]  Koen V. Hindriks,et al.  Towards an Open Negotiation Architecture for Heterogeneous Agents , 2008, CIA.

[4]  Takayuki Ito,et al.  AgentK: Compromising Strategy based on Estimated Maximum Utility for Automated Negotiating Agents , 2012, New Trends in Agent-Based Complex Automated Negotiations.

[5]  Gregory E. Kersten,et al.  Predicting opponent's moves in electronic negotiations using neural networks , 2008, Expert Syst. Appl..

[6]  Avshalom Elmalech,et al.  Gahboninho: Strategy for Balancing Pressure and Compromise in Automated Negotiation , 2013, Complex Automated Negotiations.

[7]  Elizabeth Sklar,et al.  Agent-Mediated Electronic Commerce and Trading Agent Design and Analysis, AAMAS 2007 Workshop, AMEC 2007, Honolulu, Hawaii, May 14, 2007, and AAAI 2007 Workshop, TADA 2007, Vancouver, Canada, July 23, 2007, Selected and Revised Papers , 2009, International Workshop on Agent-Mediated Electronic Commerce and Trading Agents Design and Analysis.

[8]  Koen V. Hindriks,et al.  Acceptance Conditions in Automated Negotiation , 2013, Complex Automated Negotiations.

[9]  Sarit Kraus,et al.  Facing the challenge of human-agent negotiations via effective general opponent modeling , 2009, AAMAS.

[10]  Koen V. Hindriks,et al.  Predicting the Performance of Opponent Models in Automated Negotiation , 2013, 2013 IEEE/WIC/ACM International Joint Conferences on Web Intelligence (WI) and Intelligent Agent Technologies (IAT).

[11]  Pramod K. Varshney,et al.  Modern Approaches in Applied Intelligence - 24th International Conference on Industrial Engineering and Other Applications of Applied Intelligent Systems, IEA/AIE 2011, Syracuse, NY, USA, June 28 - July 1, 2011, Proceedings, Part I , 2011, IEA/AIE.

[12]  Katsuhide Fujita,et al.  Compromising Strategy Based on Estimated Maximum Utility for Automated Negotiation Agents Competition (ANAC-10) , 2011, IEA/AIE.

[13]  Valentin Robu,et al.  Advances in Agent-Based, Complex Automated Negotiations , 2012 .

[14]  Sarit Kraus,et al.  The First Automated Negotiating Agents Competition (ANAC 2010) , 2012, New Trends in Agent-Based Complex Automated Negotiations.

[15]  Takayuki Ito,et al.  New Trends in Agent-Based Complex Automated Negotiations , 2011, Studies in Computational Intelligence.

[16]  Koen V. Hindriks,et al.  The first automated negotiating agents competition (ANAC 2010) , 2016 .

[17]  Bo An,et al.  Yushu: A Heuristic-Based Agent for Automated Negotiating Competition , 2012, New Trends in Agent-Based Complex Automated Negotiations.

[18]  Takayuki Ito,et al.  AgentK2: Compromising Strategy Based on Estimated Maximum Utility for Automated Negotiating Agents , 2013, Complex Automated Negotiations.

[19]  Liviu Dan Serban,et al.  AgentFSEGA: Time Constrained Reasoning Model for Bilateral Multi-Issue Negotiations , 2012, New Trends in Agent-Based Complex Automated Negotiations.

[20]  Matthias Klusch,et al.  Cooperative Information Agents XII, 12th International Workshop, CIA 2008, Prague, Czech Republic, September 10-12, 2008. Proceedings , 2008, CIA.

[21]  Arie Segev,et al.  Automated Negotiations: A Survey of the State of the Art , 1997, Wirtschaftsinf..

[22]  Nicholas R. Jennings,et al.  IAMhaggler2011: A Gaussian Process Regression Based Negotiation Agent , 2013, Complex Automated Negotiations.

[23]  Magnus Boman,et al.  Multi-Agent Rationality , 1997, Lecture Notes in Computer Science.

[24]  Guido Governatori,et al.  A formal approach to negotiating agents development , 2002, Electron. Commer. Res. Appl..

[25]  Takayuki Ito,et al.  Complex Automated Negotiations: Theories, Models, and Software Competitions , 2013, Complex Automated Negotiations.

[26]  Niels van Galen Last.  Agent Smith: Opponent Model Estimation in Bilateral Multi-issue Negotiation , 2012, New Trends in Agent-Based Complex Automated Negotiations.

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

[28]  Nicholas R. Jennings,et al.  A Generic Software Framework for Automated Negotiation , 2002 .

[29]  Iyad Rahwan,et al.  Architectures for Negotiating Agents , 2003, CEEMAS.

[30]  Catholijn M. Jonker,et al.  An agent architecture for multi-attribute negotiation using incomplete preference information , 2007, Autonomous Agents and Multi-Agent Systems.

[31]  A. Rubinstein.  Perfect Equilibrium in a Bargaining Model , 1982 .

[32]  Koen V. Hindriks,et al.  Opponent modelling in automated multi-issue negotiation using Bayesian learning , 2008, AAMAS.

[33]  Dhananjay K. Gode,et al.  Allocative Efficiency of Markets with Zero-Intelligence Traders: Market as a Partial Substitute for Individual Rationality , 1993, Journal of Political Economy.

[34]  Koen V. Hindriks,et al.  A Tit for Tat Negotiation Strategy for Real-Time Bilateral Negotiations , 2013, Complex Automated Negotiations.

[35]  T. Eymann,et al.  Co-Evolution of Bargaining Strategies in a Decentralized Multi-Agent System , 2001 .

[36]  Gerhard Weiss,et al.  An Efficient and Adaptive Approach to Negotiation in Complex Environments , 2012, ECAI.

[37]  Nicholas R. Jennings,et al.  IAMhaggler: A Negotiation Agent for Complex Environments , 2012, New Trends in Agent-Based Complex Automated Negotiations.

[38]  Mark Hendrikx,et al.  TheNegotiator: A Dynamic Strategy for Bilateral Negotiations with Time-Based Discounts , 2013, Complex Automated Negotiations.

[39]  Koen V. Hindriks,et al.  Accepting optimally in automated negotiation with incomplete information , 2013, AAMAS.

[40]  Nicholas R. Jennings,et al.  Determining successful negotiation strategies: an evolutionary approach , 1998, Proceedings International Conference on Multi Agent Systems (Cat. No.98EX160).

[41]  Asaf Frieder,et al.  Value Model Agent: A Novel Preference Profiler for Negotiation with Agents , 2013, Complex Automated Negotiations.

[42]  Ho-fung Leung,et al.  ABiNeS: An Adaptive Bilateral Negotiating Strategy over Multiple Items , 2012, 2012 IEEE/WIC/ACM International Conferences on Web Intelligence and Intelligent Agent Technology.

[43]  Sarit Kraus,et al.  Evaluating practical negotiating agents: Results and analysis of the 2011 international competition , 2013, Artif. Intell..

[44]  Katia P. Sycara,et al.  Bayesian learning in negotiation , 1998, Int. J. Hum. Comput. Stud..

[45]  Dongmo Zhang,et al.  AI 2012: Advances in Artificial Intelligence , 2012, Lecture Notes in Computer Science.

[46]  Koen V. Hindriks,et al.  Towards a Quality Assessment Method for Learning Preference Profiles in Negotiation , 2008, AMEC/TADA.

[47]  Koen V. Hindriks,et al.  Measuring the Performance of Online Opponent Models in Automated Bilateral Negotiation , 2012, Australasian Conference on Artificial Intelligence.

[48]  Nicholas R. Jennings,et al.  Multi-issue negotiation under time constraints , 2002, AAMAS '02.