Abstract
Decommitment is the action of foregoing of a contract for another (superior) offer. It has been analytically shown that, using decommitment, agents can reach higher utility levels in case of negotiations with uncertainty about future opportunities. We study the decommitment concept for the novel setting of a large-scale logistics setting with multiple, competing companies. Orders for transportation of loads are acquired by agents of the (competing) companies by bidding in online auctions. We find significant increases in profit when the agents can decommit and postpone the transportation of a load to a more suitable time. Furthermore, we analyze the circumstances for which decommitment has a positive impact if agents are capable of handling multiple contracts simultaneously. Lastly, we present a demonstrator of the developed model in the form of a Java Applet.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Preview
Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.
References
S. Aknine, S. Pinson, and M. F. Shakun. An extended multi-agent negotiation protocol. Autonomous Agents and Multi-Agent Systems, 8(1):5–45, 2004.
M. Andersson and T. Sandholm. Leveled commitment contracts with myopic and strategic agents. Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, 25:615–640, 2001.
H.-J. Bürckert, K. Fischer, and G. Vierke. Teletruck: A holonic fleet management system. In Proceedings of the 14th European Meeting on Cybernetics and Systems Research, pages 695–700, 1999.
A. Byde, C. Preist, and N. R. Jennings. Decision procedures for multiple auctions. In Autonomous Agents & Multiagent Systems, pages 613–622, part 2. ACM press, 2002.
S. Clearwater, editor. Market based Control of Distributed Systems. World Scientific Press, Singapore., 1995.
C. Dellarocas. Goodwill hunting: An economically efficient online feedback mechanism in environments with variable product quality. In W. Walsh, editor, Proceedings of the 4th Workshop on Agent Mediated Electronic Commerce at AAMAS 2002. Lecture Notes in Artificial Intelligence from Springer-Verlag volume 2531, pages 238–252. Springer, 2002.
J. Epstein and R. Axtell. Growing Artificial Societies: Social Science From The Bottom Up. Brookings Institution, 1996.
K. Fischer, J. P. Müller, and M. Pischel. Cooperative transportation scheduling, an application domain for DAI. Journal of Applied Artificial Intelligence, special issue on intelligent agents, 10(1), 1996.
T. R. Fox M. S., Barbuceanu M. Agent-oriented supply-chain management. International Journal of Flexible Manufacturing Systems, 12:165–188, 2000.
P. Klemperer. Auction theory: a guide to the literature. Journal of economic surveys, pages 227–286, 1999.
M. Klusch and A. Gerber. Casa: Agent-based integrated services network for timber production and sales. IEEE Intelligent Systems, 17(2), 2002.
L. Mui, A. Halberstadt, and M. Mojdeh. Notions of reputation in multi-agents systems: A review. In Autonomous Agents & Multiagent Systems. ACM press, 2002.
S. Ossowski, A. Fernández, J. M. Serrano, J.-L. P. de-la Cruz, M.-V. Belmonte, J. Z. Hernández, A. Garcá-Serrano, and J.-M. Maseda. Designing multiagent decision support system-the case of transportation management. In Proceedings of the Third International Conference on Autonomous Agents & Multiagent Systems (AAMAS), New York, pages 1470–1471, 2004.
H. S. Otter, A. van der Veen, and H. J. de Vriend. ABLOoM: Location behaviour, spatial patterns, and agent-based modelling. Journal of Artificial Societies and Social Simulation, 4(4), 2001.
F. D. P. Keller and D. Precup. Redagent-2003: An autonomous supply-chain management agent. Proceedings of the Third International Conference on Autonomous Agents & Multiagent Systems (AAMAS), New York, pages 1182–1189, 2004.
D. C. Parkes and L. H. Ungar. An auction-based method for decentralized train scheduling. In Proceedings 5th International Conference on Autonomous Agents (Agents’01), 2001.
D. Perugini, D. Lambert, L. Sterling, and A. R. Pearce. Agent-based global transportation scheduling in military logistics. Proceedings of the Third International Conference on Autonomous Agents & Multiagent Systems (AAMAS), New York, pages 1278–1279, 2004.
P.J.’ t Hoen and La Poutré, J.A. A decommitment strategy in a competitive multiagent transportation setting. In Proceedings of the 5th Workshop on Agent Mediated Electronic Commerce at AAMAS 2003, volume 3048 of Lecture Notes in Artificial Intelligence, pages 56–72. Springer, 2003.
A. Poot, G. Kant, and A. Wagelmans. A savings based method for real-life vehicle routing problems. Technical Report EI 9938/A, Erasmus University Rotterdam, Econometric Institute in its series Econometric Institute Reports, 1999.
C. Preist, C. Bartolini, and I. Phillips. Algorithm design for agents which participate in multiple simultaneous auctions. In Proceedings of Agent Mediated E-Commerce, LNAI 2003, page 139 ff, 2001.
T. Sandholm. An implementation of the contract net protocol based on marginal cost calculations. In Proceedings of the 12th International Workshop on Distributed Artificial Intelligence, pages 295–308, Hidden Valley, Pennsylvania, 1993.
T. Sandholm. Limitations of the vickrey auction in computational multiagent systems. In 2nd International Conference on Multiagent Systems (ICMAS-96), pages 299–306. AAAI Press, 1996.
T. Sandholm and V. Lesser. Issues in automated negotiation and electronic commerce: Extending the contract net framework. In Proceedings of the First International Conference on Multiagent Systems., pages 328–335, Menlo park, California, 1995. AAAI Press / MIT Press.
T. Sandholm and V. Lesser. Leveled-commitment contracting, a backtracking instrument for multiagent systems. AI Magazine, Fall 2002:89–100, 2002.
T. Sandholm and V. R. Lesser. Leveled commitment contracts and strategic breach. Games and Economic Behavior, 35:212–270, 2001. Special issue on AI and Economics. Early version: Advantages of a Leveled Commitment Contracting Protocol in the proceedings of the National Conference on Artificial Intelligence (AAAI), pp. 126–133, Portland, OR, 1996.
T. Sandholm, T. Suri, S. Gilpin, and A. Levine. CABOB: A fast optimal algorithm for combinatorial auctions. In International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence (IJCAI), 2001.
J. Sauer, T. Freese, and T. Teschke. Towards agent-based multi-site scheduling. In ECAI 2000 European Conference on Artificial Intelligence 14th Workshop, New Results in Planning, Scheduling and Design (PUK2000), 2000.
P. Stone, R. Schapire, J. Csirik, M. Littman, and D. McAllester. ATTac-2001: A learning, autonomous bidding agent. In W. Walsh, editor, Proceedings of the 4th Workshop on Agent Mediated Electronic Commerce at AAMAS 2002. Lecture Notes in Artificial Intelligence from Springer-Verlag volume 2531, pages 143–160. Springer, 2002.
E. Tempelman. Daf-trucks-where materials make money. In Second Workshop on Cold and Hot Forging of Light-Weight Materials, Delft, from the ICFG (International Cold Forging Group), 2002.
I. J. Timm, editor. Proceedings of the Workshop on Agent Technologies in Logistics. ECAI, 2002.
M. van Dyne. Negotiated Decommitment in a Collaborative Agent Environment. PhD thesis, University of Kansas, 2003.
W. Vickrey. Counterspeculation, auctions and competitive sealed tenders. Journal of Finance, 16:8–37, 1961.
D. Wolpert, K. Tumer, and J. Frank. Using collective intelligence to route internet traffic. In Advances in Neural Information Processing Systems-11, pages 952–958, Denver, 1998.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2005 Birkhäuser Verlag
About this paper
Cite this paper
Hoen, P.J., Robu, V., La Poutré, H. (2005). Decommitment in a Competitive Multi-Agent Transportation Setting. In: Unland, R., Calisti, M., Klusch, M. (eds) Software Agent-Based Applications, Platforms and Development Kits. Whitestein Series in Software Agent Technologies. Birkhäuser Basel. https://doi.org/10.1007/3-7643-7348-2_17
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/3-7643-7348-2_17
Publisher Name: Birkhäuser Basel
Print ISBN: 978-3-7643-7347-4
Online ISBN: 978-3-7643-7348-1
eBook Packages: Computer ScienceComputer Science (R0)