A formal analysis of interest-based negotiation

  • Authors:

  • Iyad Rahwan;Philippe Pasquier;Liz Sonenberg;Frank Dignum

  • Affiliations:

  • Faculty of Informatics, The British University in Dubai, Dubai, United Arab Emirates and School of Informatics, University of Edinburgh, Edinburgh, UK;School of Interactive Art and Technology, Simon Fraser University, Vancouver, Canada;Dept. of Information Systems, University of Melbourne, Parkville, Australia 3010;Dept. of Information & Computing Sciences, Utrecht University, Utrecht, The Netherlands

  • Venue:
  • Annals of Mathematics and Artificial Intelligence
  • Year:
  • 2009

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Abstract

In multi-agent systems (MAS), negotiation provides a powerful metaphor for automating the allocation and reallocation of resources. Methods for automated negotiation in MAS include auction-based protocols and alternating offer bargaining protocols. Recently, argumentation-based negotiation has been accepted as a promising alternative to such approaches. Interest-based negotiation (IBN) is a form of argumentation-based negotiation in which agents exchange (1) information about their underlying goals; and (2) alternative ways to achieve these goals. However, the usefulness of IBN has been mostly established in the literature by appeal to intuition or by use of specific examples. In this paper, we propose a new formal model for reasoning about interest-based negotiation protocols. We demonstrate the usefulness of this framework by defining and analysing two different IBN protocols. In particular, we characterise conditions that guarantee their advantage (in the sense of expanding the set of individual rational deals) over the more classic proposal-based approaches to negotiation.