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.