Argumentation as distributed constraint satisfaction: applications and results

Conflict resolution is a critical problem in distributed and collaborative multi-agent systems. Negotiation via argumentation (NVA), where agents provide explicit arguments or justifications for their proposals for resolving conflicts, is an effective approach to resolve conflicts. Indeed, we are applying argumentation in some realworld multi-agent applications. However, a key problem in such applications is that a well-understood computational model of argumentation is currently missing, making it difficult to investigate convergence and scalability of argumentation techniques, and to understand and characterize different collaborative NVA strategies in a principled manner. To alleviate these difficulties, we present distributed constraint satisfaction problem (DCSP) as a computational model for investigating NVA. We model argumentation as constraint propagation in DCSP. This model enables us to study convergence properties of argumentation, and formulate and experimentally com...

• Type: Conference
• Year: 2001
• Where: AGENTS
• Authors: Hyuckchul Jung, Milind Tambe, Shriniwas Kulkarni
• Keywords: AGENTS 2001, Argumentation, Multi-agent Systems, NVA Strategies, Security Privacy