A Negotiation Enabling Agent Based Infrastructure: Composition and Behavior

Software agent-based negotiation is a major method to automate the interactions in electronic marketplaces and Internet enabled communities. The traditional approach is to let the agents to interact directly. In this paper it has been investigated how a mediator agent can improve the chances to reach the agreement via bargaining. Although the ideal mathematical model was proposed in the seventies, this was never implemented as a working mechanism, due to the fact that the mediator needed information that was difficult to gather and the usual environment was not repetitive enough to consolidate this information for a fair mediation. The agent-based infrastructure proposed collects continuously data about the negotiating parties and the mediator agents use this data to reduce the exaggeration of the parties. The paper includes a mediation example and the major conclusion is that negotiation is improved by a mediator which has historical data about the negotiating parties.     

Coordinating patient preferences through automated negotiation: A multiagent systems model for diagnostic services scheduling

This paper presents a multiagent systems model for patient diagnostic services scheduling. We assume a decentralized environment in which patients are modeled as self-interested agents who behave strategically to advance their own benefits rather than the system wide performance. The objective is to improve the utilization of diagnostic imaging resources by coordinating patient individual preferences through automated negotiation. The negotiation process consists of two stages, namely patient selection and preference scheduling. The contract-net protocol and simulated annealing based meta-heuristics are used to design negotiation protocols at the two stages respectively. In terms of game theoretic properties, we show that the proposed protocols are individually rational and incentive compatible. The performance of the preference scheduling protocol is evaluated by a computational study. The average percentage gap analysis of various configurations of the protocol shows that the results obtained from the protocol are close to the optimal ones. In addition, we present the algorithmic properties of the preference scheduling protocol through the validation of a set of eight hypotheses.     

Argumentation-based negotiation planning for autonomous agents

When we negotiate, the arguments uttered to persuade the opponent are not the result of an isolated analysis, but of an integral view of the problem that we want to agree about. Before the negotiation starts, we have in mind what arguments we can utter, what opponent we can persuade, which negotiation can finish successfully and which cannot. Thus, we plan the negotiation, and in particular, the argumentation. This fact allows us to take decisions in advance and to start the negotiation more confidently. With this in mind, we claim that this planning can be exploited by an autonomous agent. Agents plan the actions that they should execute to achieve their goals. In these plans, some actions are under the agent's control, while some others are not. The latter must be negotiated with other agents. Negotiation is usually carried out during the plan execution. In our opinion, however, negotiation can be considered during the planning stage, as in real life. In this paper, we present a novel approach to integrate argumentation-based negotiation planning into the general planning process of an autonomous agent. This integration allows the agent to take key decisions in advance. We evaluated this proposal in a multiagent scenario by comparing the performance of agents that plan the argumentation and agents that do not. These evaluations demonstrated that performance improves when the argumentation is planned, specially, when the negotiation alternatives increase.     

一种具有身份锁的门限多秘密共享方案

为了避免现有秘密共享方案中不同秘密的访问控制结构可能相同的问题,提出一种基于身份锁的门限多秘密共享方案,身份锁决定秘密的授权子集,只有授权子集中的用户可以恢复秘密,对不同的秘密存在不同的身份锁。在保持子秘密可重复使用及可检测欺骗行为的前提下,不增加任何参与者的信息交互,有效地解决了不同秘密的访问控制结构难以更改的问题。同时,基于会话密钥协商算法,该方案不需要预设系统存在安全通道来传输秘密份额,因此具有较好的安全性和实用性。该方案非常适用于视频会议、文件分发等基于身份权限访问控制的门限多秘密共享场景。     

多并发谈判事务管理模型应用研究

自动谈判是近年来人们致力研究的一个热点问题。在对买方多并发谈判研究的基础上,提出了一个多并发谈判事务管理模型,模型能够管理一个买方同时进行的多个双边谈判事务。模拟分析表明该模型具有一定的可行性和有效性。     

基于Norm和信任评估的全局协商模型研究

为了解决传统协商模型在描述企业及企业供应链时表现出的表达模糊及主体间的无效信任问题,提出一种基于Norm和信任评估的全局协商模型.利用Norm语义工具对企业信息进行描述,结合基于承诺的信任评估方法对协商模型中的适应度及信任度进行参数评估.对涉及企业环境的协商议题使用改进的遗传算法进行任务求解,对涉及企业业务的协商议题利用改进的合同网协议进行任务求解.最后,结合某生产企业供应链的实例对该协商模型进行详细设计.实验证明,该模型能够实现对企业环境及业务的全局任务求解,求解效率较其他模型有一定的提升.     

Majority and minority influence in group negotiation: The moderating effects of social motivation and decision rules.

In organizational groups, often a majority has aligned preferences that oppose those of a minority. Although such situations may give rise to majority coalitions that exclude the minority or to minorities blocking unfavorable agreements, structural and motivational factors may stimulate groups to engage in integrative negotiation, leading to collectively beneficial agreements. An experiment with 97 3-person groups was designed to test hypotheses about the interactions among decision rule, the majority's social motivation, and the minority's social motivation. Results showed that under unanimity rule, minority members block decisions, thus harming the group, but only when the minority has proself motivation. Under majority rule, majority members coalesce at the minority's expense, but only when the majority has a proself motivation. Implications for negotiation research and group decision making are discussed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Claiming a large slice of a small pie: Asymmetric disconfirmation in negotiation.

Three studies show that negotiators consistently underestimate the size of the bargaining zone in distributive negotiations (the small-pie bias) and, by implication, overestimate the share of the surplus they claim (the large-slice bias). The authors explain the results by asymmetric disconfirmation: Negotiators with initial estimates of their counterpart's reservation price that are "inside" the bargaining zone tend to behave consistently with these estimates, which become self-fulfilling, whereas negotiators with initial "outside" estimates revise their perceptions in the face of strong disconfirming evidence. Asymmetric disconfirmation can produce a population-level bias, even when initial perceptions are accurate on average. The authors suggest that asymmetric disconfirmation has implications for confirmation bias and self-fulfilling-prophecy research in social perception. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

仲裁局势的边际解及其应用

本文对双边常规仲裁中仲裁人的行为做了深入探讨,建立了用于仲裁双边冲突的两阶段效用规划模型,在此基础上提出了仲裁局势的边际解概念,并对一种常见的仲裁局势给出了边际解的一些重要性质。在应用研究中,本文引入了满意函数以替代效用函数,以此得出了两阶段满意规划仲裁模型。