Extending Contract Net Protocol for Arguing Agents

Negotiation is a technique through which two agents having conflicting interests reach an agreement that is beneficial for both of them. Argumentation-based negotiation is a better form of negotiation where one negotiating agent argues with another to justify its position and influences the other agent to follow it. This increases the likelihood and quality of agreement in a negotiation process. In this paper, we present an interaction protocol to support argumentation-based negotiation in agent-based e-commerce. We extend the widely used Contract Net protocol for the purpose with a set of performatives essential for argumentation scenario.