Negotiation in Multi-Agent System using Partial-Order Schedule

In systems composed of multiple autonomous agents, negotiation is a key form of interaction that enables groups of agents to arrive at a mutual agreement regarding some belief, goal or plan, for example. In general, multi-linked negotiation (including both the directly linked and the indirectly linked relationships) describes situations where one agent needs to negotiate with multiple agents about different issues, where the negotiation over one issue influences the negotiations over other issues. The characteristics of the commitment on one issue affect the evaluation of a commitment or the construction of a proposal for another issue. In this paper we built a partial order schedule representation with the help of which we effectively manage interacting negotiation issues.Also we explored how flexibility is an important factor for ordering and managing negotiation issues in a successful negotiation and enables an agent to reason explicitly about the interactions among multiple negotiation issues in order to achieve higher performance.