[agents] CFP: The 2nd International Automated Negotiating Agents Competition (ANAC @ AAMAS 2011)

[Koen Hindriks]

The 2nd International Automated Negotiating Agents Competition (ANAC @ AAMAS
2011)    

May 2-6, 2011, Taipei, Taiwan

 

Call For Participants

We would like to invite you to participate in the Automated Negotiating
Agents Competition (ANAC). The purpose of the competition is to steer the
research in the area bilateral multi-issue closed negotiation. Closed
negotiation, when opponents do not reveal their preferences to each other,
is an important class of real-life negotiations. Negotiating agents designed
using heuristic approach need extensive evaluation, typically through
simulations and empirical analysis, since it is usually impossible to
predict precisely how the system and the constituent agents will behave in a
wide variety of circumstances. Furthermore, there is a need for the
development of a best practice repository for negotiation techniques. That
is, a coherent resource that describes which negotiation techniques are best
suited to a given type of problem or domain. 

 

To facilitate research in the area of bilateral multi-issue negotiation the
GENIUS system is developed. GENIUS allows easy development and integration
of existing negotiating agents. GENIUS can be used to simulate individual
negotiation sessions as well as tournaments between negotiating agents in
various negotiation scenarios. It implements an open architecture that
allows easy development and integration of existing negotiating agents using
design patterns. The core functionality of the system includes:
(1)specification of negotiation domains and preference profiles; (2)
simulation of a bilateral negotiation between agents (3) analysis of the
negotiation outcomes and negotiation dynamics. An analytical toolbox
integrated in GENIUS calculates optimal solutions, such as the Pareto
efficient frontier, Nash product and others. It allows the specification of
negotiation domains and preference profiles by means of a graphical user
interface.

 

Performance of agents will be evaluated in a tournament that is defined by a
set of agents, negotiation domains and preference profiles. For a tournament
a set of negotiation sessions will be generated by matching all agents with
all other agents on all domains using all profiles submitted by participants
for the competition. A negotiation domain is a specification of the
objectives and issues to be resolved by means of negotiation. An objective
may branch into sub-objectives and issues providing a tree-like structure to
the domain. Preferences profiles are defined for a specific negotiation
domain and represent preferences of a single negotiating party in the domain
regarding possible agreements. The preferences of a party are modeled using
utility functions.

 

The ANAC competition will be held in spring 2011, with the finals being run
during the AAMAS 2011 conference. The reward for the winner of the
competition is US$1000.

 

Organization

* Prof. Dr. Takayuki Ito (Organizing chair)

* Prof. Dr. Catholijn Jonker

* Prof. Dr. Sarit Kraus

* Prof. Dr. Minjie Zhang

* Dr. Koen Hindriks 

* Dr. Raz Lin 

* Tim Baarslag

 

Timeline

* Design and test your agent in GENIUS yourself. 

* Jan. 31st, 2011. The deadline for submitting agents and domains for
Qualifying round. 

  Those who submit ONE domain have the right to submit ONE agent. 

* Feb. 28th, 2011.  Announcement of 8 finalists. 

* March 31st, 2011. The deadline for submitting final agents and domains for
final round. 

* May 2-6, 2011.  Final competition in AAMAS and presentations in ACAN.

 

ACAN2011 will have a special session for presentations for ANAC teams.

 

It is expected that teams that make it through to the finals will attend the
AAMAS 2011 conference. 

 

More information about ANAC and GENIUS is available at: 

http://www.anac2011.com/

http://mmi.tudelft.nl/negotiation/index.php/Automated_Negotiating_Agents_Com
petition_%28ANAC%29 

http://mmi.tudelft.nl/negotiation/index.php/Genius 

 

Sponsors

Makoto Lab., Inc.

Bar-Ilan University

Delft University of Technology