Service-oriented architecture for ontologies supporting multi-agent system negotiations in virtual enterprise

This paper offers a service-oriented architecture (SOA) for ontology-based multi-agent system (MAS) negotiations in the context of virtual enterprises (VEs). The objective of this paper is fourfold. First, it is to design a SOA which utilizes ontology and MAS to provide a distributed and interoperable environment for automated negotiations in VE. In this architecture, individual ontologies for both the VE initiator and its potential partners are constructed to describe and store resources and service knowledge. Second, a series of semantic ontology matching methods are developed to reach agents’ interoperability during the negotiation process. Third, correspondence-based extended contract net protocol is presented, which provides basic guidelines for agents’ reaching mutual understandings and service negotiation. Last, a fuzzy set theory based knowledge reuse approach is proposed to evaluate the current negotiation behaviors of the VE partners. A walkthrough example is presented to illustrate the methodologies and system architecture proposed in this paper.     

基于区间相似度的动态服务协商模型

针对服务协商中信息的不对称性、协商环境的动态性以及QoS属性的不确定性和模糊性,提出基于区间相似度的动态服务协商模型。利用区间相似度和区间估计预测对方的协商策略,以此制定己方的最优反策略。算例分析表明,在动态服务协商环境下,该模型比静态协商模型更贴近现实的协商行为,能有效提高协商效率。     

Develop a negotiation framework for automating B2B processes in the RosettaNet environment using fuzzy technology

The electronic trade between enterprises becomes more popular due to the rapid development of electronic commerce. Under the electronic business environment, in order to make the trade process smoother and faster, most enterprises adopt industry standards, such as EDI and RosettaNet, for developing electronic business platforms to transact business processes. These standards and platforms can help both trading sides to control and facilitate the business processes and validate the document format. However, these processes still need human efforts to make decisions, which might cause business losses due to time delay or human error during the process. In order to solve the problem, this study takes a step further to propose a negotiation framework for automating the B2B processes. This study chooses RosettaNet purchase order management processes as an example to implement automated negotiations on Biztalk platform. In order to evaluate the negotiation behavior of the opponent, two fuzzy membership functions, preference degree and opponent’s concession degree, are proposed to develop 25 levels of fuzzy rules to determine better offers to help to reach a settlement more responsively and dynamically. Experiment results show that our approach can help B2B transaction effectively.     

Negotiation among autonomous computational agents: principles,analysis and challenges

Automated negotiation systems with software agents representing individuals or organizations and capable of reaching agreements through negotiation are becoming increasingly important and pervasive. Examples, to mention a few, include the industrial trend toward agent-based supply chain management, the business trend toward virtual enterprises, and the pivotal role that electronic commerce is increasingly assuming in many organizations. Artificial intelligence (AI) researchers have paid a great deal of attention to automated negotiation over the past decade and a number of prominent models have been proposed in the literature. These models exhibit fairly different features, make use of a diverse range of concepts, and show performance characteristics that vary significantly depending on the negotiation context. As a consequence, assessing and relating individual research contributions is a difficult task. Currently, there is a need to build a framework to define and characterize the essential features that are necessary to conduct automated negotiation and to compare the usage of key concepts in different publications. Furthermore, the development of such a framework can be an important step to identify the core elements of autonomous negotiating agents, to provide a coherent set of concepts related to automated negotiation, to assess progress in the field, and to highlight new research directions. Accordingly, this paper introduces a generic framework for automated negotiation. It describes, in detail, the components of the framework, assesses the sophistication of the majority of work in the AI literature on these components, and discusses a number of prominent models of negotiation. This paper also highlights some of the major challenges for future automated negotiation research.     

一种基于市场驱动的Multi-agent自动谈判策略

针对当前电子商务中基于Agent的谈判系统的谈判策略的静态性问题,提出基于市场驱动的谈判策略。Agent在谈判中能根据变化的市场情况做出可以调整比率的让步,帮助用户做出最优的交易决策,且自动地选择合适的策略。实验结果表明,采用基于市场驱动的策略比采用固定的策略的谈判结果更让用户感到满意。     

A three-phase process for SLA negotiation of composite cloud services

Negotiation is used when two or more parties with conflicting goals pursue their own interests. Service trading in cloud computing is a case in which automated negotiation system (ANS) can be used to achieve high satisfaction levels for both contract parties. An ANS allows the parties negotiate automatically on some parameters that are important for them. Multiple services are combined together to provide a composite service that delivers a value-added service to consumers. With the increasing tendency to use composite cloud services, there is a need for designing ANSs capable of fulfilling requirements of consumers of these services. Unlike existing ANSs which support negotiation of single service, our proposed ANS supports negotiation of composite service. This work also proposes a novel negotiation strategy to enhance satisfaction of both trading parties. Some simulations were carried out to evaluate the performance of proposed negotiation strategy in terms of negotiating agents’ utility and negotiation speed. Analysis of the results of simulations shows that our recommended strategy provides more performance than the others.     

A personal meeting scheduling agent

When setting up a meeting, meeting participants need to reach a mutual agreement to hold the meeting subject to their personal constraints and preferences. It is a time-consuming process, and a variety of calendaring applications are in use assisting users to schedule meetings. Software applications failed to overcome the constraints of the traditional-scheduling process and works as a supporting tool for managing meeting information. One of the main constraints in automated scheduling is the unavailability of a standard structured communication protocol. In addition, automated scheduling requires other issues to be considered such as automated decision-making paradigm, negotiation strategy selection mechanism, etc. This paper proposes a personal meeting scheduling agent (PMSA) and a personal meeting scheduling protocol (PMSP). PMSP is embedded in the PMSA for handling bilateral and multilateral negotiations. PMSA is designed using model-based, goal-based methodology. Additionally, PMSP is designed following a structured negotiation protocol influenced by simultaneous response protocol. To evaluate all meeting invitations and to make decisions subject to users’ preferences, participants’ profiles, and the schedule availability, this paper utilizes the naïve Bayes model of maximum likelihood Estimation. The PMSP goal is to automatically make decisions and select the appropriate negotiation strategies to avoid or resolve possible meeting conflicts. To demonstrate the feasibility of the proposed PMSP, a simulation environment with experimental results is presented.     

Model-driven trust negotiation for Web services

Trust negotiation is an approach to access control whereby access is granted based on trust established in a negotiation between the service requester and the service provider. Trust negotiation systems avoid several problems facing traditional access control models such as DAC (discretionary access control) and MAC (mandatory access control). Another problem is that Web service providers often do not know requesters identities in advance because of the ubiquitousness of services. We describe Trust-Serv, a trust negotiation framework for Web services, which features a policy language based on state machines. It is supported by lifecycle management and automated runtime enforcement tools. Credential retrieval and validation in Trust-Serv rely on predefined Web services that provide interactions with attribute assertion authorities and public key infrastructure.     

网格环境合同计算元服务的设计与应用

网格用户在使用网格服务的时候,希望能够得到一定的保障．给网络服务添加有保障的特性,并为网格服务的使用提供一个通用的接口,将会提高网格服务的QoS．为此,文章提出了合同计算元服务(CCM),CCM和Foster等人提出的SNAP协议结合,得到了C-SLA环境以及C-SNAP协议．通过这个环境和协议,提供一种服务间对话和协商的方式,从而为网格服务过程提供保障性环境．在这个环境中,协议的达成和调度,分别是通过自动协商和静态优先级调度完成的．文中叙述了这两种算法的细节以及如何在C-SLA中发挥作用．最后通过一个实际的例子,说明CCM是如何为G-QoSM等其它网格服务框架提供保障性服务的．     

基于遗传算法的多边多议题自动协商模型

协商是MAS实现协同、协作和冲突消解的关键环节。在虚拟组织建立的背景之下,讨论了现有的多agent协商技术,提出了一个基于遗传算法的多边多议题自动协商模型,并且给出了相应的协议和算法。该模型能够迅速求出协商解,且agent能保持较高的效用,因此具有一定的通用性,适宜在动态的、时间约束强的开放网络环境下工作。     

Lifetime service level agreement management with autonomous agents for services provision

In the web services environment, service level agreements (SLA) refers to mutually agreed understandings and expectations between service consumers and providers on the service provision. Although management of SLA is critical to wide adoption of web services technologies in the real world, support for it is very limited nowadays, especially in web service composition scenarios. There lacks adequate frameworks and technologies supporting various SLA operations such as SLA formation, enforcement, and recovery. This paper presents a novel agent-based framework which utilises the agents’ ability of negotiation, interaction, and cooperation to facilitate autonomous SLA management in the context of service composition provision. Based on this framework, mechanisms for autonomous SLA operations are proposed and discussed. Results from simulations show that by integrating agents and web services the framework can address issues of SLA management drawn from sophisticated service composition scenarios.     

Continuous-Time Negotiation Mechanism for Software Agents

While there are several existing mechanisms and systems addressing the crucial and difficult issues of automated one-to-many negotiation, this paper develops a flexible one-to-many negotiation mechanism for software agents. Unlike the existing general one-to-many negotiation mechanism, in which an agent should wait until it has received proposals from all its trading partners before generating counterproposals, in the flexible one-to-many negotiation mechanism, an agent can make a proposal in a flexible way during negotiation, i.e., negotiation is conducted in continuous time. To decide when to make a proposal, two strategies based on fixed waiting time and a fixed waiting ratio is proposed. Results from a series of experiments suggest that, guided by the two strategies for deciding when to make a proposal, the flexible negotiation mechanism achieved more favorable trading outcomes as compared with the general one-to-many negotiation mechanism. To determine the amount of concession, negotiation agents are guided by four mathematical functions based on factors such as time, trading partners' strategies, negotiation situations of other threads, and competition. Experimental results show that agents guided by the four functions react to changing market situations by making prudent and appropriate rates of concession and achieve generally favorable negotiation outcomes     

How cognitive and affective aspects can influence the outcome of the group decision‐making process

Supporting group decision‐making when the decision makers are spread around the world is a complex process. The mechanisms of automated negotiation, such as argumentation, can be used in Ubiquitous Group Decision Support Systems (UbiGDSS) to help decision makers find a solution based on their preferences. However, the decision‐making process is much more than just a simple criteria and alternative analysis. There are many cognitive and affective issues that affect the outcome, and these issues should not be ignored; otherwise, the quality of the decision could be compromised. In this paper, we detail an UbiGDSS architecture and explore 2 cognitive and affective methods that are essential to the group decision‐making process. We explain how agents can reason about self‐expertise and other decision makers' credibility, and how agents can verify and react to tendencies throughout the decision‐making process. We intend agents to achieve higher quality and more consensual decisions. In any simulation environment that we tested, agents that analysed credibility, expertise, and/or analysed tendencies always achieved a higher consensus compared to agents that used neither of the proposed methods. Likewise, agents that used neither of the proposed methods or only performed tendencies analysis obtained the worst average satisfaction levels for each simulation environment.     

Time-bound negotiation framework for electronic commerce agents

For efficient and informative coordination of agents especially in electronic commerce environment, a time-bound agent negotiation framework is proposed utilizing a time-based commitment scheme. By attaching commitment duration to agent messages, the traditional contract net protocol is extended to a time-bound negotiation framework (TBNF). The proposed negotiation framework has a new message type which allows for parties to agree upon the extension of a commitment duration, and a novel commitment concept in the form of negative commitment. The semantics of the messages with the commitment duration are interpreted, and then the three typical negotiation protocols are formally defined and compared — nothing-guaranteed protocol, acceptance-guaranteed protocol, and finite-time guarantee protocol — which can be incorporated into TBNF. The TBNF should provide a background for efficient and effective electronic commerce negotiation while accommodating each agent's adaptive negotiation strategy.     

多Agent系统中基于信任度评估模型的自动信任协商

在动态开放的系统中．由于Agent间交互存在着不确定性,安全成为一个重要问题。在现有的自动信任协商的基础上．考虑主观信任的作用．提出基于信任度评估模型的自动信任协商框架．详细介绍框架中的主要成分及其功能．着重讨论基于信任度评估模型的访问控制,以及在信任度评估模型基础上的两种协商对策：基于信任度评估模型的积极对策和基于信任度评估模型的谨慎对策。分别详细介绍采取上述两种对策的协商过程．并结合一应用实例说明基于信任度评估模型的积极对策的协商过程。     

Multi-attribute negotiation mechanism for manufacturing service allocation in smart manufacturing

Smart manufacturing is undergoing rapid development along with many disruptive technologies, such as Internet of Things, cyber-physical system and cloud computing. A myriad of heterogeneous manufacturing services can be dynamically perceived, connected and interoperated to satisfy various customized demands. In smart manufacturing, the market equilibrium is variable over time due to changes in demand and supply. Thus, efficient manufacturing service allocation (MSA) is critical to implementation of smart manufacturing. This paper considers the MSA problem under market dynamics with maximization of utility of customers and service providers. Many conventional methods generally allocate manufacturing services to the customers by multi-objective optimization without considering the impact of interactions between customers and service providers. This paper presents a multi-attribute negotiation mechanism to address the MSA problem under time constraints relying on autonomous agents. The proposed negotiation mechanism is composed of two models: an atomic manufacturing service negotiation model and a composite manufacturing service coordination. The former model is based on automated negotiation to seek an atomic manufacturing service over multiple attributes for an individual subtask. The latter model incorporates the global distribution and surplus redistribution to coordinate and control multiple atomic manufacturing service negotiations for the whole manufacturing task. Numerical studies are employed to verify the effectiveness of the multi-attribute negotiation mechanism in solving the MSA problem. The results show that the proposed negotiation mechanism can address the MSA problem and surplus redistribution can effectively improve the success rate of negotiations.     

Modeling Agent Negotiation Via Fuzzy Constraints in E-Business

In e-business, disputes between two or more parties arise for various reasons and involve different issues. Thus, resolution of these disputes frequently relies on some form of negotiation. This article presents a general problem-solving framework for modeling multi-issue multilateral agent negotiation using fuzzy constraints in e-business. Fuzzy constraints are thus used not only to define each agent's demands involving human concepts, but also to represent the relationships among agents. A concession strategy, based on fuzzy constraint-based problem-solving, is proposed to relax demands, and a trade-off strategy is presented to evaluate existing alternatives. This approach provides a systematic method for reaching an agreement that benefits all agents with a high satisfaction degree of constraints. Meanwhile, by applying the method, agents can move toward an agreement more quickly, because their search focuses only on the feasible solution space. An example application to negotiate an insurance policy among agents is provided to demonstrate the usefulness and effectiveness of the proposed framework.     

An Agent Based Framework for Internetware Computing

Internetware intends to be a paradigm of Web-based software development. At present, researches on Internetware have gained daily expanding attentions and interests. This paper proposes an agent based framework for Internetware computing. Four principles are presented that are followed by this framework. They are the autonomy principle, the abstract principle, the explicitness principle and the competence principle. Three types of agents with di?erent responsibilities are designed and specified. They are the capability providing agents, the capability planning agents and the capability consuming agents. In this sense, capability decomposition and satisfaction turns to be a key issue for this framework and becomes a communication protocol among these distributed and heterogenous agents. A capability conceptualization is proposed and based on the conceptualization, an agent coalition formation mechanism has been developed. This mechanism features that (1) all the participants make their one decisions on whether or not joining the coalition based on the capability realization pattern generated by the capability planning agents as well as the benefits they can obtain; and (2) the coalition selection is conducted by a negotiation process for satisfying the expectations of all the participants as the complexity of this problem has been proven to be NP-complete.     

Fault-tolerant Service Level Agreement lifecycle management in clouds using actor system

Automated Service Level Agreements (SLAs) have been proposed for cloud services as contracts used to record the rights and obligations of service providers and their customers. Automation refers to the electronic formalized representation of SLAs and the management of their lifecycle by autonomous agents. Most recently, SLA automated management is becoming increasingly of importance. In previous work, we have elaborated a utility architecture that optimizes resource deployment according to business policies, as well as a mechanism for optimization in SLA negotiation. We take all that a step further with the application of actor systems as an appropriate theoretical model for fine-grained, yet simplified and practical, monitoring of massive sets of SLAs. We show that this is a realistic approach for the automated management of the complete SLA lifecycle, including negotiation and provisioning, but focus on monitoring as the driver of contemporary scalability requirements. Our proposed work separates the agreement’s fault-tolerance concerns and strategies into multiple autonomous layers that can be hierarchically combined into an intuitive, parallelized, effective and efficient management structure.