Reasoning about commitments in multiple concurrent negotiations
OA Location
Author(s)
Nguyen, TD
Jennings, NR
Type
Conference Paper
Abstract
Automated negotiation by software agents is a key enabling technology for agent mediated e-commerce. To this end, this paper considers an important class of such negotiations - namely those in which an agent engages in multiple concurrent bilateral negotiations for a good or service. In particular, we consider the situation in which a buyer agent is looking for a single service provider from a number of available ones in its environment. By bargaining similtaneously with these providers and interleaving partial agreements that it makes with them, a buyer can reach good deals in an efficient manner. However, a key problem in such encounters is managing commitments since an agent may want to make intermediate deals (so that it has a definite agreement) with other agents before it gets to finalize a deal at the end of the encounter. To do this effectively, however, the agents need to have a flexible model of commitments that they can reason about in order to determine when to commit and to decommit. This paper provides and evaluates such a commitment manager and integrates it into the negotiation model.
Date Issued
2004
Citation
2004, pp.77-84
Start Page
77
End Page
84
Identifier
http://eprints.soton.ac.uk/259562/
Source
6th International Conference on E-Commerce
Notes
Event Dates: 2004
Publication Status
Unpublished