This paper presents the design and implementation of negotiation agents that negotiate with other entities for acquiring multiple resources. In our approach, agents utilize a time-dependent negotiation strategy in which the reserve price of each negotiation issue is dynamically determined by 1) the likelihood that negotiation will not be successfully completed (conflict probability), 2) the expected agreement price of the issue, and 3) the expected number of final agreements. Results from a series of experiments indicate that on average, our negotiation strategy achieved higher average utility than traditional negotiation strategies. Categories and Subject Descriptors I.2.11 [Distributed Artificial Intelligence]: Multiagent Systems General Terms Algorithms, Design Keywords Multi-resource negotiation, negotiation agents, heuristics
Bo An, Victor R. Lesser, Kwang Mong Sim