Valentin Robu – författare

This volume contains 12 thoroughly refereed and revised papers detailing recent advances in research on designing trading agents and mechanisms for agent-mediated e-commerce. They were originally presented at three events: the Workshop on Agent-Mediated Electronic Commerce (AMEC 2013), co-located with AAMAS 2013 in Saint Paul, MN, USA, in May 2013; the Workshop on Trading Agent Design and Analysis (TADA 2013), co-located with AAAI 2013 in Bellevue, WA, USA, in July 2013; and the Joint Workshop on Trading Agent Design and Analysis (TADA 2014) and Agent-Mediated Electronic Commerce (AMEC 2014), co-located with AAMAS 2014 in Paris, France, in May 2014.

Given the breadth of research topics in this field, the range of topics addressed in these papers is correspondingly broad. These include the study of theoretical issues related to the design of interaction protocols and marketplaces; the design and analysis of automated trading strategies used by individual agents; and the deployment of such strategies, in times as part of an entry to the trading agent competition.

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.

The 10 papers presented in this volume were carefully reviewed and selected for inclusion in the book. Both workshops aim to present a cross-section of the state of the art in automated electronic markets and encourage theoretical and empirical work that deals with both the individual agent level as well as the system level. Given the breadth of research topics in this field, the range of topics addressed in these papers is correspondingly broad. They range from papers that study theoretical issues, related to the design of interaction protocols and marketplaces, to the design and analysis of automated trading strategies used by individual agents - which are often developed as part of an entry to one of the tracks of the Trading Agents Competition.  

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 volume contains ten thoroughly refereed and revised papers detailing recent advances in research on designing trading agents and mechanisms for agent-mediated e-commerce. They were originally presented at the 13th International Workshop on Agent-Mediated Electronic Commerce (AMEC 2011), collocated with AAMAS 2011 in Taipei, Taiwan, or at the 2011 Workshop on Trading Agent Design and Analysis (TADA 2011), collocated with IJCAI 2011 in Barcelona, Spain.

This volume contains 11 thoroughly refereed and revised papers detailing recent advances in research on designing trading agents and mechanisms for agent-mediated e-commerce. They were originally presented at the Joint Workshop on Trading Agent Design and Analysis (TADA 2012) and Agent-Mediated Electronic Commerce (AMEC 2012) co-located with AAMAS 2012 in Valencia, Spain, in June 2012.

The increasing reliance on software agents has created a range of pressing new research challenges, including the design of appropriate agent decision algorithms, approaches for predicting the complex behaviors and interactions of multiple agents, including the computation of equilibria, and the engineering of protocols and mechanisms that ensure electronic markets behave in a stable manner or fulfill other desirable criteria. Drawing upon a diverse range of scientific disciplines, including computer science, economics, artificial intelligence, operations research and game theory, the papers collected in this volume represent a cross-section of recent research and cover topics such as strategies for individual trading agents, the design of markets and interaction protocols between agents, and a variety of applications.

This book focuses on automated negotiations based on multi-agent systems. It is intended for researchers and students in various fields involving autonomous agents and multi-agent systems, such as e-commerce tools, decision-making and negotiation support systems, and collaboration tools. The contents will help them to understand the concept of automated negotiations, negotiation protocols, negotiating agents’ strategies, and the applications of those strategies. In this book, some negotiation protocols focusing on the multiple interdependent issues in negotiations are presented, making it possible to find high-quality solutions for the complex agents’ utility functions. This book is a compilation of the extended versions of the very best papers selected from the many that were presented at the International Workshop on Agent-Based Complex Automated Negotiations.