2006-2007 Seminar Series

Current research in multi-agent systems (MAS) has advanced to the development of open MAS, which are characterized by the heterogeneity of agents, free exit/entry and decentralized control. Conflicts of interests among agents are inevitable, and hence automated negotiation to resolve them is one of the promising solutions. In this talk I will present three modifications on alternating-offer bargaining protocols for automated negotiation in open MAS: allowing non-monotonic offers during the bargaining (non-monotonic-offers bargaining protocol), allowing strategic delay (delay-based bargaining protocol), and allowing strategic ignorance to augment argumentation when the bargaining comprises argumentation (ignorance-based argumentation-based negotiation protocol). The long-term goal of my research is to design negotiation protocols which can be easily used by intelligent agents in accommodating their need in resolving their conflicts.

Pinata received his M. Sc. in Computer Science and an M.A. in Economics from Guangzhou Jinan University, China, and University of Mississippi respectively, in 1996 and 1999. In September 2001 he joined the PhD program in the Department of Computer Science, University of Saskatchewan. He has more than ten years industrial, research and teaching experiences, and has published more than 20 peer-reviewed articles in journals and conference proceedings. His paper entitled .Non-Monotonic-Offers Bargaining Protocol. received the best student paper award in the 3rd International Joint Conference on Autonomous Agents and Multi-Agent Systems (AAMAS.2004). Currently, he is teaching in the Department of Computer Science, Hong Kong Baptist University.