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A Rule-Driven Approach for Defining the Behaviour of Negotiating Software Agents

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Distributed Communities on the Web (DCW 2002)

Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science ((LNCS,volume 2468))

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Abstract

One problem with existing agent-mediated negotiation systems is that they rely on ad hoc, static, non-adaptive, and hardcoded schemes to represent the behavior of agents. This limitation is probably due to the complexity of the negotiation task itself. Indeed, while negotiating, software (human) agents face tough decisions. These decisions are based not only on the information made available by the negotiation server, but on the behavior of the other participants in the negotiation process as well. The information and the behavior in question are constantly changing and highly uncertain. In this paper, we propose a ruledriven approach to represent, manage and explore negotiation strategies and coordination information. Among the many advantages of this solution, we can cite the high level of abstraction, the closeness to human understanding, the versatility, and the possibility to modify the agents’ behavior during the negotiation. To validate our approach, we ran several agent tournaments, and used a rule-driven mechanism to implement bidding strategies that are common in the English and Dutch auctions. We also implemented simple coordination schemes across several auctions. The ongoing validation work is detailed and discussed in the second part of the paper.

The completion of this research was made possible thanks to Bell Canada’s support through its Bell University Laboratories R&D program, funding by the NSERC (National Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada, CRD-224950-99), and support by the CIRANO (Centre Interuniversitaire de Recherche en ANalyse des Organisations).

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Département d’informatique et de recherche opérationnelle, Université de Montréal, C.P. 6128 Succursale Centre-ville, Montréal, Québec, H3C 3J7, Canada

    Morad Benyoucef, Hakim Alj & Kim Levy

  2. Zuehlke Engineering AG, Wiesenstrasse 10a, CH-8952, Schlieren, Switzerland

    Rudolf K. Keller

Authors
  1. Morad Benyoucef
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  2. Hakim Alj
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  3. Kim Levy
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  4. Rudolf K. Keller
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Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. School of Computer Science and Engineering, University of New South Wales, Sydney, NSW, 2052, Australia

    John Plaice

  2. Department of Computer Science and Operations Research, University of Montreal, C.P. 6128 succ. Centre-Ville, Montreal, Quebec, H3C 3J7, Canada

    Peter G. Kropf

  3. Distributed Systems Laboratory, University of Ulm, James Frank Ring 0-27, 89069, Ulm, Germany

    Peter Schulthess

  4. Faculty of Computer Science, Dalhousie University, 6050 University Avenue, Halifax, Nova Scotia, B3H 1W5, Canada

    Jacob Slonim

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© 2002 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg

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Benyoucef, M., Alj, H., Levy, K., Keller, R.K. (2002). A Rule-Driven Approach for Defining the Behaviour of Negotiating Software Agents. In: Plaice, J., Kropf, P.G., Schulthess, P., Slonim, J. (eds) Distributed Communities on the Web. DCW 2002. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 2468. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/3-540-36261-4_16

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/3-540-36261-4_16

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  • Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-540-00301-4

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-540-36261-6

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