Minjie Zhang – författare

This bookcovers recent advances in Complex Automated Negotiations as a widely studiedemerging area in the field of Autonomous Agents and Multi-Agent Systems. The book includes selectedrevised and extended papers from the 7th International Workshop on Agent-Based ComplexAutomated Negotiation (ACAN2014), which was held in Paris, France, in May2014. The book also includes brief introductions aboutAgent-based Complex Automated Negotiation which are based on tutorials providedin the workshop, and brief summaries and descriptions about the ANAC''14 (AutomatedNegotiating Agents Competition) competition, where authors of selectedfinalist agents explain the strategies and the ideas used by them. Thebook is targeted to academic and industrial researchers in various communitiesof autonomous agents and multi-agent systems, such as agreement technology,mechanism design, electronic commerce, related areas, as well as graduate,undergraduate, and PhD students working in those areas or having interest inthem.

This book addresses several important aspects of complex automated negotiations and introduces a number of modern approaches for facilitating agents to conduct complex negotiations. It demonstrates that autonomous negotiation is one of the most important areas in the field of autonomous agents and multi-agent systems. Further, it presents complex automated negotiation scenarios that involve negotiation encounters that may have, for instance, a large number of agents, a large number of issues with strong interdependencies and/or real-time constraints.

Electronic Commerce technologies have been studied widely in the field of Economics and Informatics. In recent years, there are multiple aspects of researches in electronic commerce including supply chain model, Internet auctions, Internet volume discounts, electronic bank and stock trading, and several others. The increase of Electronic Commerce research activities can be observed in a variety of the fields. The aim of this book is to encourage activities in this field, and to bring researchers with an interest in Electronic Commerce. This book is edited from some aspects of e-commerce researches including theoretical mechanism design of trading based on auctions, allocation mechanism based on negotiation among multi-agent, case-study and analysis of e-trading, data engineering issues in e-commerce, and so on. The reason why the many aspects are included is to show the outline of the newest research result of e-commerce research.

Complex Automated Negotiations have been widely studied and are becoming an important, emerging area in the field of Autonomous Agents and Multi-Agent Systems. In general, automated negotiations can be complex, since there are a lot of factors that characterize such negotiations. These factors include the number of issues, dependency between issues, representation of utility, negotiation protocol, negotiation form (bilateral or multi-party), time constraints, etc. Software agents can support automation or simulation of such complex negotiations on the behalf of their owners, and can provide them with adequate bargaining strategies. In many multi-issue bargaining settings, negotiation becomes more than a zero-sum game, so bargaining agents have an incentive to cooperate in order to achieve efficient win-win agreements. Also, in a complex negotiation, there could be multiple issues that are interdependent. Thus, agent’s utility will become more complex than simple utility functions. Further, negotiation forms and protocols could be different between bilateral situations and multi-party situations. To realize such a complex automated negotiati on, we have to incorporate advanced Artificial Intelligence technologies includes search, CSP, graphical utility models, Bays nets, auctions, utility graphs, predicting and learning methods. Applications could include e-commerce tools, decisionmaking support tools, negotiation support tools, collaboration tools, etc.

These issues are explored by researchers from different communities in Autonomous Agents and Multi-Agent systems. They are, for instance, being studied in agent negotiation, multi-issue negotiations, auctions, mechanism design, electronic commerce, voting, secure protocols, matchmaking & brokering, argumentation, and co-operation mechanisms. This book is also edited from some aspects of negotiation researches including theoretical mechanism design of trading based on auctions, allocation mechanismbased on negotiation among multi-agent, case-study and analysis of automated negotiations, data engineering issues in negotiations, and so on.

Complex Automated Negotiations represent an important, emerging area in the field of Autonomous Agents and Multi-Agent Systems. Automated negotiations can be complex, since there are a lot of factors that characterize such negotiations. These factors include the number of issues, dependencies between these issues,  representation of utilities, the negotiation protocol, the number of parties in the negotiation (bilateral or multi-party), time constraints, etc. Software agents can support automation or simulation of such complex negotiations on the behalf of their owners, and can provide them with efficient bargaining strategies. To realize such a complex automated negotiation, we have to incorporate advanced Artificial Intelligence technologies includes search, CSP, graphical utility models, Bayes nets, auctions, utility graphs, predicting and learning methods. Applications could include e-commerce tools, decision-making support tools, negotiation support tools, collaboration tools, etc. This book aims to provide a description of the new trends in Agent-based, Complex Automated Negotiation, based on the papers from leading researchers. Moreover, it gives an overview of the latest scientific efforts in this field, such as the platform and strategies of automated negotiating techniques.

This book focuses on all aspects of complex automated negotiations, which are studied in the field of autonomous agents and multi-agent systems. This book consists of two parts. I: Agent-Based Complex Automated Negotiations and II: Automated Negotiation Agents Competition. The chapters in Part I are extended versions of papers presented at the 2012 international workshop on Agent-Based Complex Automated Negotiation (ACAN), after peer reviews by three Program Committee members. Part II examines in detail ANAC 2012 (The Third Automated Negotiating Agents Competition), in which automated agents that have different negotiation strategies and are implemented by different developers are automatically negotiated in the several negotiation domains. ANAC is an international competition in which automated negotiation strategies, submitted by a number of universities and research institutes across the world, are evaluated in tournament style. The purpose of the competition is to steer the research in the area of bilateral multi-issue, closed negotiation. This book also includes the rules, results, agents and domain descriptions for ANAC 2011 as submitted by the organizers and finalists.