基于对手案例学习的多议题协商决策模型

为了解决多Agent系统(MAS)协商双方在信息对称情况下的自动协商问题,提出了一种用基于支持向量机算法的间接学习对手协商态度的协商方法,提出了不完全信息条件下基于案例和对策论的Agent多议题Pareto最优协商模型,通过支持向量机的方法来学习协商轨迹,得到协商对手在每个协商项的态度,然后利用学习得到的对手协商态度,构造了一个协商的决策模型,此模型能同时基于对手的态度和自身的偏好来做出协商决策。最后通过实验验证了该方法的先进性。     

基于学习的多Agent多议题协商优化研究

以买方Agent的观点,对从交易平台上获得的卖方Agent的历史协商信息进行分析,并根据其特点做初步过滤。在此基础上,针对现有协商模型中存在的问题,提出了一个Agent协商对手选择算法和相应的交互机制,并验证了其可行性。该算法可用于Agent协商开始前协商对手的选择和初始信念的更新,对Agent在协商中策略的选择和执行具有指导作用,能有效提高Agent在协商中的效用及效率。     

多Agent自动协商的公平性研究

为了能够快速、高效地进行Agent协商,构建一个优化的多Agent协商模型。在这个模型的基础上,提出了一个基于协商各方公平性的协商学习算法。算法采用基于满意度的思想评估协商对手的提议,根据对方Agent协商历史及本次协商交互信息,通过在线学习机制预测对方Agent协商策略,动态得出协商妥协度并向对方提出还价提议。最后,通过买卖协商仿真实验验证了该算法的收敛性,表明基于该算法的模型工作的高效性、公平性。     

资源分配问题的协商模型

研究Agent多次协商过程中的策略调整问题,目的是使得Agent在协商过程中具有自学能力,对环境和协商对手更敏感。结合资源分配问题,讨论Agent协商过程中的学习问题,基于博弈论分别分析了单次协商和多次协商模型,给出了协商过程中在不同信息条件下遵循的策略,并进行了证明。     

基于偏好的双边多议题协商优化

提出一种优化的自动协商模型。Agent在信知不完全的情况下通过学习交互历史和在线协商信息获取对手的偏好,结合贝叶斯方法和支持向量机学习对手偏好,基于保留值和权重提出一种决策模型。通过实验比较和分析,该模型能有效降低协商次数,提高协商双方的联合效用。在信息保密和先验知识未知的环境下,该模型仍然表现出了较高的效用和效率。     

一种多Agent多议题的协商模型

协商是多Agent系统实现协作、协调和冲突消解的关键技术。本文分析了协商问题的实质和协商过程,提出了一种支持多轮协商的多Agent多议题协商模型。模型中引入了Agent类型的概念,在信息不完全的条件下,协商Agent通过推测协商对手的类型来指导自身的提议策略和协商战术,使提议更具针对性,避免了盲目性,从而节约了协商时间,提高了协
商质量。     

基于贝叶斯分类的增强学习协商策略

为了帮助协商Agent选择最优行动实现其最终目标,提出基于贝叶斯分类的增强学习协商策略。在协商过程中,协商Agent根据对手历史信息,利用贝叶斯分类确定对手类型,并及时动态地调整协商Agent对对手的信念。协商Agen、通过不断修正对对手的信念,来加快协商解的收敛并获得更优的协商解。最后通过实验验证了策略的有效性和可用性。     

一个基于Bayesian学习的协商模型

在Multi-Agent系统(MAS)中,每一个Agent都有不同的目标。通常只拥有对方的不完全信息。Agent需要具有解决在实现各自目标过程中所产生的各种矛盾的能力。协商是解决这些矛盾的一种有效途径。本文提出了一个基于Bayesian学习的协商模型NMBL：在每一轮协商中,Agent通过Bayesian学习获取协商对手的信息,更新对协商对手的信念,然后根据基于冲突点和不妥协度的协商策略提出下一轮的协商提议。NMBL把整个协商过程看成一个动态的交互过程,体现了Multi-Agent系统的动态特性,同时NMBL具有较强的学习能力。试验证明,该模型具有较好的协商性能。     

多Agent自动协商中机器学习的应用研究

目前将机器学习理论应用到多Agent自动协商系统中已成为电子商务领域的最新研究课题。本文即是利用贝叶斯法则来更新协商中的环境信息（即信念），利用强化学习中的Q学习算法生成协商中的提议，建立了一个具有学习机制的多Agent自动协商模型。并且封传统Q学习算法追行了扩充，设计了基于Agent的当前信念和最近探索盈余的动态Q学习算法。实验验证了算法的收敛性。     

基于Bayesian学习的适应性优化协商模型

在复杂的自动协商环境中,设计能够处理不完全信息和动态情形的协商agent有效学习机制正成为具有挑战性的议题.提出了一种基于Bayesian学习的时间依赖的双边多议题协商优化模型(BLMSEAN).通过只观察对手的历史报价,将Bayesian学习和基于混合策略的演化算法相结合,所提模型使得协商agent能够对于对手协商参数的概率分布有更精确的估计(如期限、保留报价和议题权重等),能够适应性地调整让步策略使协商双方都受益,提高了协商的成功率和效用.通过实验可以显示所提的模型学习对手私有信息和适应性调整让步策略的有效性.     

The impact of available information on negotiation results

Negotiation is the most famous tool for reaching an agreement between parties. Usually, the different parties can be modeled as a buyer and a seller, who negotiate about the price of a given item. In most cases, the parties have incomplete information about one another, but they can invest money and efforts in order to acquire information about each other. This leads to the question of how much each party will be willing to invest on information about its opponent, prior to the negotiation process. In this paper, we consider the profitability of automated negotiators acquiring information on their opponents. In our model, a buyer and a seller negotiate on the price of a given item. Time is costly, and incomplete information exists about the reservation price of both parties. The reservation price of the buyer is the maximum price it is willing to pay for an item or service, and the reservation price of the seller is the minimum price it is willing to receive in order to sell the item or service. Our research is based on Cramton’s symmetrical protocol of negotiation that provides the agents with stable and symmetric strategies, and involves a delay in proposing an offer for signaling. The parties in Cramton’s model delay their offers in order to signal their strength, and then an agreement is reached after one or two offers. We determine the Nash equilibrium for agents that prefer to purchase information. Then, in addition to the theoretical background, we used simulations to check which type of equilibrium will actually be obtained. We found that in most of the cases, each agent will prefer to purchase information only if its opponent does. The reason for these results lies in the fact that an agent that prefers to purchase information according to a one-side method, signals its weakness and thereby reduces its position in the negotiation. Our results demonstrate the efficiency of joint information acquisition by both agents, but they also show that one-sided information purchasing may be inefficient, if the acquisition activity is revealed by the opponent, which causes it to infer that the informed agent is relatively weak.     

基于GAI多属性依赖的协商模型

多属性之间的依赖关系增加协商Agent效用函数的复杂性,从而也增加多属性协商问题的复杂度.本文提出一种基于GAI多属性依赖的协商模型.该模型使用GAI分解将协商Agent的非线性效用函数表示为依赖属性子集的子效用之和.在协商过程中,协商双方采用不同的让步策略和提议策略来改变提议的内容.卖方Agent利用本文提出的GAI网合并算法将协商双方的GAI网合并,并利用生成的GAI树产生使社会福利评估值最大的提议.实验表明当买方Agent采用局部让步策略且卖方Agent采用全局让步策略时,协商双方能够在有限的协商步内达到接近Pareto最优的协商结局.     

Negotiation decision functions for autonomous agents

We present a formal model of negotiation between autonomous agents. The purpose of the negotiation is to reach an agreement about the provision of a service by one agent for another. The model defines a range of strategies and tactics that agents can employ to generate initial offers, evaluate proposals and offer counter proposals. The model is based on computationally tractable assumptions, demonstrated in the domain of business process management and empirically evaluated.     

基于增强学习的代理谈判模型

利用增强学习的Q-leanling理论，构造了一个基于时间信念、价格信念和状态期望Q值的代理谈判模型。将代理交互报价的过程看成代理选择报价行动，实现状态的迁移，可以计算出代理在不同状态采取行动的Q值。代理可以通过修改信念函数及时问贴现率来调整报价。该文实现了谈判模型的报价算法，并从理论和实验数据两方面进行了分析比较。     

Bilateral bargaining with one-sided uncertain reserve prices

The problem of finding agents’ rational strategies in bargaining with incomplete information is well known to be challenging. The literature provides a collection of results for very narrow uncertainty settings, but no generally applicable algorithm. This lack has led researchers to develop heuristic approaches in an attempt to find outcomes that, even if not being of equilibrium, are mutually satisfactory. In the present paper, we focus on the principal bargaining protocol (i.e., the alternating-offers protocol) where there is uncertainty regarding one agent’s reserve price. We provide an algorithm based on the combination of game theoretic analysis and search techniques which finds pure strategy sequential equilibria when they exist. Our approach is sound, complete and, in principle, can be applied to other uncertainty settings, e.g., uncertain discount factors, and uncertain weights of negotiation issues in multi-issue negotiation. We experimentally evaluate our algorithm with a number of case studies showing that the average computational time is less than 30 s and at least one pure strategy equilibrium exists in almost all (about 99.7 %) the bilateral bargaining scenarios we have looked at in the paper.     

A protocol for multi-agent negotiation in a group-choice decision making process

Negotiation is one of the most important features of agent interactions found in multi-agent systems, because it provides the basis for managing the expectations of the individual negotiating agents, and it enables selecting solutions that satisfy all the agents as much as possible. In order for negotiation to take place between two or more agents there is need for a negotiation protocol that defines the rules of the game; consequently, a variety of agent negotiation protocols have been proposed in literature. However, most of them are inappropriate for Group-Choice Decision Making (GCDM) because they do not explicitly exploit tradeoff to achieve social optimality, and their main focus is solving two-agent negotiation problems such as buyer–seller negotiation. In this paper we present an agent negotiation protocol that facilitates the solving of GCDM problems. The protocol is based on a hybrid of analytic and artificial intelligence techniques. The analytic component of the protocol utilizes a Game Theory model of an n-person general-sum game with complete information to determine the agreement options, while the knowledge-based (artificial intelligence) component of the protocol is similar to the strategic negotiation protocol. Moreover, this paper presents a tradeoff algorithm based on Qualitative Reasoning, which the agents employ to determine the ‘amount’ of tradeoff associated with various agreement options. Finally, the paper presents simulation results that illustrate the operational effectiveness of our agent negotiation protocol.     

Bargaining with incomplete information

This paper analyses the process and outcomes of competitive bilateral negotiation for a model based on negotiation decision functions. Each agent has time constraints in the form of a deadline and a discounting factor. The importance of information possessed by participants is highlighted by exploring all possible incomplete information scenarios – both symmetric and asymmetric. In particular, we examine a range of negotiation scenarios in which the amount of information that agents have about their opponent’s parameters is systematically varied. For each scenario, we determine the equilibrium solution and study its properties. The main results of our study are as follows. Firstly, in some scenarios agreement takes place at the earlier deadline, while in others it takes place near the beginning of negotiation. Secondly, in some scenarios the price surplus is split equally between the agents while in others the entire price surplus goes to a single agent. Thirdly, for each possible scenario, the equilibrium outcome possesses the properties of uniqueness and symmetry – although it is not always Pareto optimal. Finally, we also show the relative impacts of the opponent’s parameters on the bargaining outcome.     

An agent architecture for multi-attribute negotiation using incomplete preference information

A component-based generic agent architecture for multi-attribute (integrative) negotiation is introduced and its application is described in a prototype system for negotiation about cars, developed in cooperation with, among others, Dutch Telecom KPN. The approach can be characterized as cooperative one-to-one multi-criteria negotiation in which the privacy of both parties is protected as much as desired. We model a mechanism in which agents are able to use any amount of incomplete preference information revealed by the negotiation partner in order to improve the efficiency of the reached agreements. Moreover, we show that the outcome of such a negotiation can be further improved by incorporating a “guessing” heuristic, by which an agent uses the history of the opponent’s bids to predict his preferences. Experimental evaluation shows that the combination of these two strategies leads to agreement points close to or on the Pareto-efficient frontier. The main original contribution of this paper is that it shows that it is possible for parties in a cooperative negotiation to reveal only a limited amount of preference information to each other, but still obtain significant joint gains in the outcome.     

Autonomous Adaptive Agents for Single Seller Sealed Bid Auctions

In developing open, heterogeneous and distributed multi-agent systems researchers often face a problem of facilitating negotiation and bargaining amongst agents. It is increasingly common to use auction mechanisms for negotiation in multi-agent systems. The choice of auction mechanism and the bidding strategy of an agent are of central importance to the success of the agent model. Our aim is to determine the best agent learning algorithm for bidding in a variety of single seller auction structures in both static environments where a known optimal strategy exists and in complex environments where the optimal strategy may be constantly changing. In this paper we present a model of single seller auctions and describe three adaptive agent algorithms to learn strategies through repeated competition. We experiment in a range of auction environments of increasing complexity to determine how well each agent performs, in relation to an optimal strategy in cases where one can be deduced, or in relation to each other in other cases. We find that, with a uniform value distribution, a purely reactive agent based on Cliff’s ZIP algorithm for continuous double auctions (CDA) performs well, although is outperformed in some cases by a memory based agent based on the Gjerstad Dickhaut agent for CDA.     

一种强调私密性的多智能体协商模型

提出一种更具私密性的多智能体协商模型；基于经济学边际效用的概念建立了基于市场交互机制的协商算法。每个智能体不需向市场智能体发送原料需求信息，只需发送对某种原料边际效用的符号信息；市场智能体作为中间人运行定价算法和分配算法对原料进行定价和分配。仿真结果表明本文方法与已有方法性能相近，但是协商过程不会泄露商业机密信息，更符合分布式智能体的私密性要求。