Abstract
Many autonomous agents operate in domains in which the cooperation of their fellow agents cannot be guaranteed. In such domains negotiation is essential to persuade others of the value of co-operation. This paper describes a general framework for negotiation in which agents exchange proposals backed by arguments which summarise the reasons why the proposals should be accepted. The argumentation is persuasive because the exchanges are able to alter the mental state of the agents involved. The framework is inspired by our work in the domain of business process management and is explained using examples from that domain.
On sabbatical leave from IIIA† thanks to a Spanish MEC grant PR95-313. Research partially supported by the Spanish CICYT project SMASH, TIC96-1038-C04001.
On leave from Laboratorio Nacional de Informática Avanzada -LANIA. Rébsamen, 80; Xalapa, Veracruz, Mexico. Enjoying a Mexican CONACYT grant [69068-7245].
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Sierra, C., Jennings, N.R., Noriega, P., Parsons, S. (1998). A framework for argumentation-based negotiation. In: Singh, M.P., Rao, A., Wooldridge, M.J. (eds) Intelligent Agents IV Agent Theories, Architectures, and Languages. ATAL 1997. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 1365. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/BFb0026758
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BFb0026758
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