Abstract
In electronic commerce markets where selfish agents behave individually, agents often have to acquire multiple resources in order to accomplish a high level task with each resource acquisition requiring negotiations with multiple resource providers. Thus, it is crucial to efficiently coordinate these interrelated negotiations. This paper presents the design and implementation of agents that concurrently negotiate with other entities for acquiring multiple resources. Negotiation agents in this paper are designed to adjust (1) the number of tentative agreements for each resource and (2) the amount of concession they are willing to make in response to changing market conditions and negotiation situations. In our approach, agents utilize a time-dependent negotiation strategy in which the reserve price of each resource is dynamically determined by (1) the likelihood that negotiation will not be successfully completed (conflict probability), (2) the expected agreement price of the resource, and (3) the expected number of final agreements. The negotiation deadline of each resource is determined by its relative scarcity. Agents are permitted to decommit from agreements by paying a time-dependent penalty, and a buyer can make more than one tentative agreement for each resource. The maximum number of tentative agreements for each resource made by an agent is constrained by the market situation. Experimental results show that our negotiation strategy achieved significantly more utilities than simpler strategies.
Similar content being viewed by others
References
An, B., Douglis, F., & Ye, F. (2008). Heuristics for negotiation schedules in multi-plan optimization. In Proceedings of the seventh international joint conference on autonomous agents and multi-agent systems (pp. 551–558).
An, B., Gatti, N., & Lesser, V. (2009, September). Extending alternating-offers bargaining in one-to-many and many-to-many settings. In Proceeding of the 9th IEEE/WIC/ACM international conference on intelligent agent technology (IAT) (pp. 423–426).
An, B., Lesser, V., Irwin, D., & Zink, M. (2010). Automated negotiation with decommitment for dynamic resource allocation in cloud computing. In Proceedings of the nineth international joint conference on autonomous agents and multi-agent systems (pp. 981–988).
An, B., Sim, K. M., & Lesser, V. (2007). Evolving the best-response strategy to decide when to make a proposal. In Proceedings of the 2007 IEEE congress on evolutionary computation (pp. 1035–1042).
An B., Sim K. M., Tang L., Li S., Cheng D. (2006) A continuous time negotiation mechanism for software agents. IEEE Transactions on Systems, Man, and Cybernetics, Part B 36(6): 1261–1272
Bernstein, D. (2005). Complexity Analysis and Optimal Algorithms for Decentralized Decision Making. PhD thesis, University of Massachusets, Amherst.
Branson, M., Douglis, F., Fawcett, B., Liu, Z., Riabov, A., & Ye, F. (2007). CLASP: Collaborating, autonomous data stream processing systems. In Proceedings of the ACM/IFIP/USENIX 8th international middleware conference (pp. 348–367).
Brazier F., Cornelissen F., Gustavsson R., Jonker C., Lindeberg O., Polak B., Treur J. (2002) A multi-agent system performing one-to-many negotiation for load balancing of electricity use. Electronic Commerce Research and Applications 1(2): 208–224
Cramton, P., Shoham, Y., Steinberg, R. (eds) (2006) Combinatorial Auctions. MIT Press, Cambridge
Dantzig G. (1957) Discrete variable extremum problems. Operations Research 5: 266–277
Dunne P. E. (2005) Extremal behaviour in multiagent contract negotiation. Journal of Artificial Intelligence Research 23: 41–78
Endriss U., Maudet N. (2005) On the communication complexity of multilateral trading: Extended report. Journal of Autonomous Agents and Multiagent Systems 11(1): 91–107
Faratin P., Sierra C., Jennings N. R. (1998) Negotiation decision functions for autonomous agents. International Journal of Robotics and Autonomous Systems 24(3–4): 159–182
Faratin P., Sierra C., Jennings N. R. (2002) Using similarity criteria to make issue trade-offs in automated negotiations. Artifiial Intelligence 142(2): 205–237
Fatima S. S., Wooldridge M., Jennings N. R. (2004) An agenda-based framework for multi-issue negotiation. Artificial Intelligence 152(1): 1–45
Fatima S. S., Wooldridge M., Jennings N. R. (2006) Multi-issue negotiation with deadlines. Journal of Artificial Intelligence Research 27: 381–417
Fudenberg D., Mobius M., Szeidl A. (2007) Existence of equilibrium in large double auctions. Journal of Economic Theory 127(1): 550–567
Gatti N., Giunta F. D., Marino S. (2008) Alternating-offers bargaining with one-sided uncertain deadlines: An efficient algorithm. Artificial Intelligence 172(8–9): 1119–1157
Jain, N., Amini, L., Andrade, H., King, R., Park, Y., Selo, P., & Venkatramani, C. (2006). Design, implementation, and evaluation of the linear road bnchmark on the stream processing core. In Proceeding of the 25th ACM SIGMOD international conference on management of data (pp. 431–442).
Jennings N. R., Faratin P., Lomuscio A. R., Parsons S., Sierra C., Wooldridge M. (2001) Automated negotiation: Prospects, methods and challenges. International Journal of Group Decision and Negotiation 10(2): 199–215
Krainin, M., An, B., & Lesser, V. (2007, November) An application of automated negotiation to distributed task allocation. In Proceedings of the 2007 IEEE/WIC/ACM international conference on intelligent agent technology (pp. 138–145).
Kraus S., Wilkenfeld J., Zlotkin G. (1995) Multiagent negotiation under time constraints. Artificial Intelligence 75(2): 297–345
Kreps D., Wilson R. (1982) Sequential equilibria. Econometrica 50(4): 863–894
Lai G., Li C., Sycara K. (2006) Efficient multi-attribute negotiation with incomplete information. Group Decision and Negotiation 15: 511–528
Lai, G., Li, C., Sycara, K., & Giampapa, J. (2004, December) Literature review on multi-attribute negotiations. Technical Report CMU-RI-TR-04-66, Robotics Institute, Carnegie Mellon University.
Lai G., Sycara K., Li C. (2008) A decentralized model for automated multi-attribute negotiations with incomplete information and general utility functions. Multiagent and Grid Systems 4(1): 45–65
Li C., Giampapa J. A., Sycara K. (2006) Bilateral negotiation decisions with uncertain dynamic outside options. IEEE Transactions on Systems, Man, and Cybernetics, Part C: Special issue on Game-theoretic Analysis and Stochastic Simulation of Negotiation Agents 36(1): 31–44
Lomuscio A. R., Wooldridge M., Jennings N. R. (2003) A classification scheme for negotiation in electronic commerce. International Journal Group Decision Negotiation 12(1): 31–56
Nguyen, T. D., & Jennings, N. R. (2003). A heuristic model of concurrent bi-lateral negotiations in incomplete information settings. In Proceedings of the eighteenth international joint conference on artificial intelligence (pp. 1467–1469).
Nguyen, T. D., & Jennings, N. R. (2004). Coordinating multiple concurrent negotiations. In Proceedings of the 3rd international conference on autonomous agents and multi-agent systems (pp. 1064–1071).
Nguyen T. D., Jennings N. R. (2005) Managing commitments in multiple concurrent negotiations. Electronic Commerce Research and Applications 4(4): 362–376
Nisan, N., Roughgarden, T., Tardos, E., Vazirani, V. V. (eds) (2007) Algorithmic Game Theory. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge
Osborne M. J., Rubinstein A. (1990) Bargaining and markets. Academic, New York
Preist, C., Bartolini, C., & Byde, A. (2003). Agent-based service composition through simultaneous negotiation in forward and reverse auctions. In Proceedings of the 4th ACM conference on electronic commerce (pp. 55–63).
Rahwan I., Kowalczyk R., Pham H. H. (2002) Intelligent agents for automated one-to-many e-commerce negotiation. Australian Computer Science Communications 24(1): 197–204
Riabov, A., & Liu, Z. (2005). Planning for stream processing systems. In Proceedings of the twentieth national conference on artificial intelligence (pp. 1205–1210).
Rosenschein J., Zlotkin G. (1994) Rules of Encounter: Designing conventions for automated negotiation among computers. MIT Press, Cambridge, MA
Rubinstein A. (1982) Perfect equilibrium in a bargaining model. Econometrica 50(1): 97–109
Sandholm T. (2007) Expressive commerce and its application to sourcing: how we conducted $35 billion of generalized combinatorial auctions. AI Magazine 28(3): 45–58
Sandholm T., Lesser V. (2001) Leveled commitment contracts and strategic breach. Games and Economic Behavior 35(1–2): 212–270
Sim K. M. (2002) A market-driven model for designing negotiation agents. Computational Intelligence, Special issue in Agent Technology for E-commerce 18(4): 618–637
Sim K. M. (2005) Equilibria, prudent compromises, and the “waiting” game. IEEE Transaction on Systems, Man and Cybernetics, Part B 33(3): 712–724
Sim K. M. (2006) G-commerce, market-driven g-negotiation agents and grid resource management. IEEE Transactions on Systems, Man and Cybernetics, Part B 36(6): 1381–1394
Sim K. M., Choi C. Y. (2003) Agents that react to changing market situations. IEEE Transaction on Systems, Man and Cybernetics, Part B 33(2): 188–201
Sim, K. M., & Shi, B. (2008). Adaptive commitment management strategy profiles for concurrent negotiations. In Proceedings of the first international workshop on agent-based complex automated negotiations (pp. 16–23).
Sim, K. M., & Shi, B. (2010). Concurrent negotiation and coordination for grid resource co-allocation. IEEE Transaction on Systems, Man and Cybernetics, Part B, 40(3), 753–766.
Sim K. M., Wang S. (2004) Flexible negotiation agent with relaxed decision rules. IEEE Transaction on Systems, Man and Cybernetics, Part B 34(3): 1602–1608
Sycara K. (1991) Problem restructuring in negotiation. Management Science 37(10): 1248–1268
Zhang X., Lesser V., Abdallah S. (2005) Efficient management of multi-linked negotiation based on a formalized model. Journal of Autonomous Agents and MultiAgent Systems 10(2): 165–205
Zhang X., Lesser V., Wagner T. (2006) Integrative negotiation among agents situated in organizations. IEEE Transactions on System, Man, and Cybernetics: Part C 36(1): 19–30
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
An, B., Lesser, V. & Sim, K.M. Strategic agents for multi-resource negotiation. Auton Agent Multi-Agent Syst 23, 114–153 (2011). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10458-010-9137-2
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10458-010-9137-2