Designing Agents with Negotiation Capabilities

Abstract

Agents are viewed as the next significant software abstraction, and it is expected they will become as ubiquitous as graphical user interfaces are today. Agents are specialized programs designed to provide services to their users. Multiagent systems have a key capability to reallocate tasks among the members, which may result in significant savings and improvements in many domains, such as resource allocation, scheduling, e-commerce, and so forth. In the near future, agents will roam the Internet, selling and buying information and services. These agents will evolve from their present day form - simple carriers of transactions - to efficient decision makers. It is envisaged that the decision-making processes and interactions between agents will be very fast (Kephart, 1998).