Abstract
Negotiation is an important mechanism of coordination in multiagent systems. Contrary to early conceptualizations of negotiating agents, we believe that decisions regarding the negotiation issue and the negotiation partner are equally important as the selection of negotiation steps. Our C-IPS approach considers these three aspects as separate decision processes. It requires an explicit specification of interdependencies between them. In this article we address the task of specifying the dynamic interdependencies by means of IPS dynamics. Thereby we introduce a new level of modeling negotiating agents that is above negotiation mechanism and protocol design. IPS dynamics are presented using state charts. We define some generally required states, predicates and actions. We illustrate the dynamics by a simple example. The example is first specified for an idealized scenario and is then extended to a more realistic model that captures some features of open multiagent systems. The well-structured reasoning process for negotiating agents enables more comprehensive and hence more flexible architectures. The explicit modeling of all involved decisions and dependencies eases the understanding, evaluation, and comparison of different approaches to negotiating agents.
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Schröter, K., Urbig, D. (2004). C-IPS: Specifying Decision Interdependencies in Negotiations. In: Lindemann, G., Denzinger, J., Timm, I.J., Unland, R. (eds) Multiagent System Technologies. MATES 2004. Lecture Notes in Computer Science(), vol 3187. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-540-30082-3_9
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-540-30082-3_9
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