Abstract
This paper presents a novel approach to automated negotiation that is particularly suitable to open environments, such as the Internet. In this approach agents can negotiate in any type of marketplace regardless of the negotiation mechanism in use. In order to support a wide variety of negotiation mechanisms, protocols are no longer hardcoded in the agents participating to negotiations, but are now expressed in terms of a shared ontology, thus making this approach particularly suitable for applications such as electronic commerce. The paper describes the negotiation ontology and provides a walkthrough example describing how the approach based on the negotiation ontology could be applied to the trading agent competition scenario.
Preview
Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.
Similar content being viewed by others
References
The “London Classification”. Technical report, 2000.
J.C. Arpírez, O. Corcho, M. Fernández-López, and A. Gómez-Pérez. WebODE: A scalable workbench for ontological engineering. In Proceedings of the First International Conference on Knowledge Capture, K-CAP 2001. ACM-Sigmod, 2001.
C. Bartolini, C. Preist, and N.R. Jennings. A generic software framework for automated negotiation. In Proceedings of the First International Conference on Autonomous Agent and Multi-Agent Systems, 2002.
T. Berners-Lee. Weaving the Web. Orion Business: London, 1999.
H. Chalupsky. Ontomorph: A translation system for symbolic knowledge. In A.G. Cohn, F. Giunchiglia, and B. Selman, editors, Principles of Knowledge Representation and Reasoning. Proceedings of the seventh international conference (KR’2000), pages 471–482, San Francisco, CA, 2000. Morgan Kaufmann.
B. Chandrasekaran, J.R. Josephson, and V.R. Benjamins. Ontology of task and methods. In Proceedings of the Eleventh Workshop on Knowledge Acquisition, Modeling and Management (KAW’98), Ban., Alberta, Canada, Ban., Alberta, Canada, 1998. University of Calgary.
D. Fensel, I. Horrocks, F. van Harmelen, D. L. McGuinness, and P. F. Patel-Scheider. The semantic web. IEEE Intelligent Systems, 16(2):24–25, 2001.
A. Gómez-Pérez. Knowledge sharing and reuse. In J. Liebowitz, editor, The Handbook of Applied Expert Systems, pages 10.1–10.36. CRC Press LLC, Boca Raton, FL, 1998.
T. R. Gruber. A translation approach to portable ontology specifications. Knowledge Acquisition, 5(2):199–220, 1993.
J. Hendler. Agents and the semantic web. IEEE Intelligent Systems, 16(2):30–37, 2001.
O. Ho.mann, M. Stumptner, and T. Chalabi. A perspective based approach to design. In Proceedings of the KI 2001 workshop on Planning, Scheduling and Configurations, 2001.
Ian Horrocks, Peter F. Patel-Schneider, and Frank van Harmelen. Reviewing the design of DAML+OIL: An ontology language for the semantic web. In Proc. of the 18th Nat. Conf. on Artificial Intelligence (AAAI 2002), 2002. To appear.
N. R. Jennings, P. Faratin, A. R. Lomuscio, S. Parsons, C. Sierra, and M. Wooldridge. Automated negotiation: prospects, methods and challenges. International Journal of Group Decision and Negotiation, 10(2):199–215, 2001.
S. Kraus. Negotiation and cooperation in multi-agent environments. Artificial Intelligence, 94(1-2):79–98, July 1997.
S. Kraus. Strategic Negotiation in Multiagent Environments. The MIT Press: Cambridge, MA, 2001.
O. Lassila and D. McGuinness. The role of frame-based representation on the semantic web. Electronic Transactions on Artificial Intelligence (ETAI) Journal: area The Semantic Web, To appear, 2001.
A.R. Lomuscio, M. Wooldridge, and N.R. Jennings. A classification scheme for negotiation in electronic commerce. In F. Dignum and C. Sierra, editors, Agent mediated electronic commerce: a European perspecive, pages 19–33. Springer-Verlag, Berlin, 2000.
G.F. Luger. Artificial intelligence. Structures and strategies for complex problem solving. Addison Wesley-Pearson Education, Harlow, England, fourth edition, 2002.
R. Neches, R.E. Fikes, T. Finin, T.R. Gruber, R. Patil, T. Senator, and W.R. Swartout. Enabling technology for knowledge sharing. AI Magazine, 12(3):36–56, 1991.
A. Newell. The knowledge level. Artificial intelligence, 18(1):87–127, 1982.
J. S. Rosenschein and G. Zlotkin. Rules of Encounter: Designing Conventions for Automated Negotiation among Computers. The MIT Press: Cambridge, MA, 1994.
T. Sandholm. Distributed rational decision making. In G. Weiß, editor, Multiagent Systems, pages 201–258. The MIT Press: Cambridge, MA, 1999.
R. G. Smith. A Framework for Distributed Problem Solving. UMI Research Press, 1980.
R. Studer, V.R. Benjamins, and D. Fensel. Knowledge engineering, principles and methods. Data and Knowledge Engineering, 25(1-2):161–197, 1998.
M. Uschold, P. Clark, M. Healy, K. Williamson, and S. Woods. An experiment in ontology reuse. In Proceedings of the Eleventh Workshop on Knowledge Acquisition, Modeling and Management (KAW’98), Ban., Alberta, Canada, Ban., Alberta, Canada, 1998. University of Calgary.
G. van Heijst, A.Th. Schreiber, and B.J. Wielinga. Using explicit ontologies in kbs development. International Journal of Human-Computer Studies, 45:184–292, 1997.
M. P. Wellman, P. R. Wurman, K. O’Malley, R. Bangera, S.-de Lin, D. Reeves, and W. E. Walsh. Designing the market game for a trading agent competition. IEEE Internet Computing, 5(2):43–51, 2001.
S. Willmott, M. Calisti, and E. Rollon. Challenges in large-scale open agent mediated economies. In J. Padget, D.C. Parkes, N.M. Sadeh, and O.Shehory abd W.E. Walsh, editors, Proceedings of the AAMAS’02 workshop on agent mediated electronic commerce IV: designing mechanisms and systems, 2002.
P.R. Wurman, M.P. Wellman, and W.E. Welsh. A parametrization of the auction design space. Games and economic behavior, 35(1/2):304–338, 2001.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2002 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg
About this paper
Cite this paper
Tamma, V., Wooldridge, M., Blacoe, I., Dickinson, I. (2002). An Ontology Based Approach to Automated Negotiation. In: Padget, J., Shehory, O., Parkes, D., Sadeh, N., Walsh, W.E. (eds) Agent-Mediated Electronic Commerce IV. Designing Mechanisms and Systems. AMEC 2002. Lecture Notes in Computer Science(), vol 2531. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/3-540-36378-5_14
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/3-540-36378-5_14
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg
Print ISBN: 978-3-540-00327-4
Online ISBN: 978-3-540-36378-1
eBook Packages: Springer Book Archive