Using Gaussian processes to optimise concession in complex negotiations against unknown opponents

  • Authors:
  • Colin R. Williams;Valentin Robu;Enrico H. Gerding;Nicholas R. Jennings

  • Affiliations:
  • School of Electronics and Computer Science, University of Southampton, Southampton, UK;School of Electronics and Computer Science, University of Southampton, Southampton, UK;School of Electronics and Computer Science, University of Southampton, Southampton, UK;School of Electronics and Computer Science, University of Southampton, Southampton, UK

  • Venue:
  • IJCAI'11 Proceedings of the Twenty-Second international joint conference on Artificial Intelligence - Volume Volume One
  • Year:
  • 2011

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Abstract

In multi-issue automated negotiation against unknown opponents, a key part of effective negotiation is the choice of concession strategy. In this paper, we develop a principled concession strategy, based on Gaussian processes predicting the opponent's future behaviour. We then use this to set the agent's concession rate dynamically during a single negotiation session. We analyse the performance of our strategy and show that it outperforms the state-of-the-art negotiating agents from the 2010 Automated Negotiating Agents Competition, in both a tournament setting and in self-play, across a variety of negotiation domains.