A study on multi-issue negotiation with incomplete information

Abstract

For satisfying the needs of different users in a smart home, the issue of conflict resolution must be considered. Conflicts may come from disagreement in opinions and may also be caused by exceeding the usage of shared resources. A smart home provides personalized service based on preferences of users. Explicit or implicit preferences of different users may interfere with each other or compete for system resources. A negotiation method can be considered as designing a process to search a consensus among each other. For searching a solution which satisfies all users, automatic negotiation systems play a key role to resolve problems such as conflicts or inadequate resource assignments. Sometimes, participants in the negotiation process hide private information to ensure their benefits, and it makes negotiation more difficult. We propose an automatic multiple issue negotiation model suitable in a non-cooperative multiagent setting. By using sequential projection strategies, the negotiation process always reaches an agreement, even lacking some information about opponents. Through the BOA architecture, every agent can become a negotiating agent which works for the benefits of the user who it represents.