A Negotiation Platform for Cooperating Multi-agent Systems

Distributed artificial intelligence attempts to integrate and coordinate the activities of multiple, intelligent problem solvers that come together to solve complex tasks in domains such as design, medical diagnosis, business management, and so on Due to the different goals, knowledge, and viewpoint of the agents, conflicts might arise at any phase of the problem-solving process. Managing diverse knowledge requires well-organized models of conflict resolution. In this paper, a system for cooperating intelligent agents which openly supports multi- agent conflict detection and resolution is described. The system is based on the insights, first, that each agent has its own conflict knowledge which is separated from its domain-level knowledge; and, second, that each agent has its own conflict management knowledge which is not accessible to or known by others. Furthermore, there are no globally-known conflict-resolution strategies. Each agent involved in a conflict chooses a resolution scheme according to its self interest. The problem-solving environment allows a new problem solver to be added, or an existing one to be removed, without requiring any modification of the rest of the system, and therefore achieves open information system semantics