[agents] Call for Participation: Tutorial on Agent-Mediated Electronic Negotiation (T2) @ AAMAS 2011

[Valentin Robu]

Call for Participation:  Tutorial on Agent-Mediated Electronic Negotiation
(T2)

Location: AAMAS 2011, Taipei, Taiwan

Date and time: Monday 2 May, PM (1/2 day) 

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This tutorial aims to give a broad overview of state of the art in
agent-mediated negotiation. The tutorial will focus on the game-theoretic
foundations of electronic negotiations. We review the main concepts from
both cooperative and competitive bargaining theory, such as Pareto
optimality, as well as utilitarian, Nash and Kalai-Smorodinsky
(egalitarian) solution concepts. We discuss and compare games with complete
and with incomplete information. Next, we exemplify these concepts through
some well-known sequential bargaining games, such as the ultimatum game.

A particular emphasis will be placed on multi-issue (or multi-attribute)
negotiation - a research area that has received significant attention in
recent years from the multi-agent community. We discuss some of heuristics
employed in AI and machine learning research to model negotiations over
multiple issues, especially when no information (or only incomplete
information) is available about the preferences of the negotiation
partner(s). This part of the tutorial will also focus on multi-issue
negotiations which may have realistic limitations like time-constraints,
computational tractablility, private information issues, nonlinear
utilities, etc.

Detailed outline:

1. Issues in cooperative negotiation (axiomatic bargaining approaches)
a. Definition of Pareto-optimal outcomes and Pareto-optimal frontier.
b. Solution concepts:
i. Utilitarian (maximization of sum of utilities of the agents)
ii. Nash (product maximization)
iii. Kalai-Smorodinsky (egalitarian - maximizes the minimum)

2. Basic negotiation games
a. Nash demand game
b. Ultimatum ("pie sharing") game
c. Alternating offers game

3. General issues in multi-issue negotiation
a. Utility functions used in multi-issue negotiation
i. Linear utility function models
ii. Non-linear utility functions (k-additive, bidding languages, constraint
models)
b. Learning opponent preferences in multi-issue negotiation
c. Pareto-search strategies in ISO-utility spaces

4. Complex multi-issue negotiation with time deadlines
a. Time discounting and its effect on bargaining outcomes. The first mover
advantage.
b. Concession protocols (including: hard-headed, linear, boulware and
tit-for-tat concession strategies)
c. The role of agendas in multi-issue negotiation
d. Computationally hard negotiation

5. A bidding-based method for complex multi-issue negotiation
a. Mediator-based multi-issue negotiation
b. Maximizing Social Welfare by Bidding.
c. The Issues on Scalability
d. Clustering-based Complex Multi-Issue Negotiation

The proposed tutorial is would take half a day (Monday, 2 May, afternoon)
and is introductory: no previous knowledge of negotiation is assumed. If
time allows, we will also discuss some applications of multi-issue
negotiation and recent developments in this area, such as the automated
negotiating agents competition.

We hope to see you there!

Valentin Robu, University of Southampton 
Han La Poutré, CWI, Amsterdam
Takayuki Ito, Nagoya Institute of Technology
Shaheen Fatima, Loughborough University