Negotiations in Holonic Multi-agent Systems

Abstract

Holonic multi-agent systems (HOMAS) have their own properties that make them distinct from general multi-agent systems (MAS). They are neither like competitive multi-agent systems nor cooperative, and they have features from both of these categories. There are many circumstances that holonic agents need to negotiate. Agents involved in negotiations try to maximize their utility as well as their holon’s utility. In addition, holon’s Head can overrule the negotiation whenever it wants. These differences make defining a specific negotiation mechanism for holonic multi-agent systems more significant. In this work, holonic systems are introduced at the beginning; and then different aspects of negotiation in these systems are studied. We especially try to introduce the idea of holonic negotiations. A specific negotiation mechanism for holonic multi-agent systems is proposed which is consistent with the challenges of HOMAS.