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A Formal Approach to Negotiating Agents Development

Dumas, Marlon and Governatori, Guido and ter Hofstede, Arthur H.M. and Oaks, Phillipa J. (2002) A Formal Approach to Negotiating Agents Development. Electronic Commerce Research and Applications 1(2):pp. 193-207.

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Abstract

This paper presents a formal and executable approach to capture the behaviour of parties involved in a negotiation. A party is modeled as a negotiating agent composed of a communication module, a control module, a reasoning module, and a knowledge base. The control module is expressed as a \emph{statechart}, and the reasoning module as a \emph{defeasible logic} program. A strategy specification therefore consists of a statechart, a set of defeasible rules, and a set of initial facts. Such a specification can be dynamically plugged into an agent shell incorporating a statechart interpreter and a defeasible logic inference engine, in order to yield an agent capable of participating in a given type of negotiations. The choice of statecharts and defeasible logic with respect to other formalisms is justified against a set of desirable criteria, and their suitability is illustrated through concrete examples of bidding and multi-lateral bargaining scenarios

Item Type:Journal Article
Status:Published
Keywords:automated negotiation; e-commerce agent; defeasible logic; statechart
Subjects:Subjects UNSPECIFIED
ID Code:1788
Deposited By:Dumas, Marlon
Deposited On:06 July 2005
Alternative Locations:http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/S1567-4223(02)00016-9
Copyright Owner:Copyright 2002 Elsevier
Copyright Statement:Reproduced in accordance with the copyright policy of the publisher.