In this paper we provide experimental results concerning the impact of the negotiation protocol onto the quality of the negotiation outcome as well as onto the communication complexity of interactions incurred during negotiations. We evaluate experimentally three negotiation protocols (Direct Task Assignment, Contract Net and Iterated Contract Net) with respect to two performance measures: nego...

To achieve high performance in agent-based cooperative design, the effective allocation of design agents to distributed and cooperative design tasks becomes a crucial issue. This research extends the well-known contract net protocol for decentralized task allocation in cooperative engineering design. Since the contract net protocol only provides a generic framework for agents to exchange and ev...

A critical challenge to creating effective open multi-agent systems is allowing them to operate effectively in the face of potential failures. In this paper we present an experimental evaluation of a set of domain-independent services designed to handle the failure modes ("exceptions") that can occur in such environments, applied to the wellknown "Contract Net" multi-agent system coordination p...

In development of Expert Systems (ES), it important to acquire knowledge from multiple human experts. Cooperative Distributed ES (CDES) is a framework which can unify multiple expertise to develop a large scaled ES. In CDES, ESs which are in the process of building through acquiring knowledge from human experts coorsspond to agents, and task structure is learned by cooperation among agents base...

The Contract Net Protocol is a task allocation protocol that facilitates negotiation between bidders and an auctioneer in a MultiAgent System to form a contract. The extension allows the bidders to interact with more than one auctioneer concurrently, and to update their bids until a bid is granted. This introduces flexibility and ensures better selection of a bid. In this paper, we model the Co...

The process of cooperative problem solving can be divided into four stages. First, finding potential team members, then forming a team followed by constructing a plan for that team. Finally, the plan is executed by the team. Traditionally, very simple protocols like the Contract Net protocol are used for performing the first two stages of the process. In an open environment however, there can b...

The good performance of a set of computer systems based on agents depends on the coherence degree and coordination between their activities. The study of coordination problem is an important topic for designers and researchers in the multi-agents systems field. There are several coordination mechanisms in the current literature, being the auction and the contract net the most popular ones. Thes...

The process of cooperative problem solving can be divided into four stages. First, finding potential team members, then forming a team followed by constructing a plan for that team. Finally, the plan is executed by the team. Traditionally, protocols like the Contract Net protocol are used for performing the first two stages of the process. In an open environment however, there can be discussion...

Whereas the oldest negotiation framework in distributed artiicial intelligence, the Contract Net metaphor, embodies a truly distributed negotiation procedure, some of the younger approaches to negotiation are distributed to a lesser degree, relying on a mediator to resolve connicts between agents. In this paper, we present delegated negotiation as a more distributed alternative for mediated neg...