37, An implementation of norm-based agent negotiation

Notes taken from 'An implementation of norm-based agent negotiation' (2007), by Peter Dijkstra, Henry Prakken, Kees de Vey Mestdagh

1, Introduction

2, The Problem of Regulated Information Exchange

3, Requirements for the Multi-Agent Architecture

Knowledge: In order to regulate distributed information exchange, agents must have knowledge of the relevant regulations and the local interpretations of those regulations, their goals and the likely consequences of their actions...

Reasoning: ... the agents should be capable of generating and evaluating arguments for and against certain claims and they must be able to revise their beliefs as a result of the dialogues. Finally, in order to generate conditional offers, the agents should be able to do some form of hypothetical reasoning.

Communication: ...

4, Formalisation

Dialogical interaction: Communication language; Communication protocol

5, Agent Architecture

Description of the Components: User communication module; Database communication module; Agent communication language; Execution cycle module; Negotiation policy module; Argumentation system module

Negotiation Policy: ... Our negotiation policies cover two issues: the normative issue of whether accepting an offer is obligatory or forbidden, and the teleological issue whether accepting an offer violates the agent's own interests. Of course these policies can be different for the requesting and the responding agent... In the negotiation policy for a reject, the policy returns a why-reject move which starts an embedded persuasion dialogue. The specification and implementation of embedded persuasion dialogues will be the subject of future research.

Agent execution cycle: The agent execution cycle processes messages and triggers other modules during the selection of the appropriate dialogue moves. First, the speech act, locution and content are parsed from the incoming message, then depending on the locution (offer, accept, withdraw or reject) the next steps are taken... The execution cycle can be represented in Java pseudo-code...

6, Illustration of the Agent Architecture

Knowledge base: Knowledge is represented in the prolog-like syntax of the ASPIC tool...

Dialogue from example 2: ...

7, Conclusion