KMi Publications

Tech Reports

Tech Report kmi-04-10 Abstract


Modelling Agents Behaviour in Automated Negotiation
Techreport ID: kmi-04-10
Date: 2004
Author(s): Chongming Hou
Download PDF

This paper presents a learning mechanism that applies nonlinear regression analysis to model a negotiation agents behaviour based only on the opponent's previous offers. The behaviour of negotiation agents in this study is determined by their tactics in the form of decision functions. Heuristics based on estimates of an agents tactics are drawn from a series of experiments. By applying the nonlinear regression and the obtained heuristic knowledge, an agent can improve their overall performance by predicting the opponents deadline and reservation value, terminating pointless negotiation, and avoiding negotiation breakdown. The findings of this study show that this approach can be used to obtain better deals than previously proposed tactics. The learning mechanism can be used online, without any prior knowledge about the other agents and is therefore, very useful in open systems where agents have little or no information about each other.
 
KMi Publications
 

Semantic Web and Knowledge Services is...


Semantic Web and Knowledge Services
"The Semantic Web is an extension of the current web in which information is given well-defined meaning, better enabling computers and people to work in cooperation" (Berners-Lee et al., 2001).

Our research in the Semantic Web area looks at the potentials of fusing together advances in a range of disciplines, and applying them in a systemic way to simplify the development of intelligent, knowledge-based web services and to facilitate human access and use of knowledge available on the web. For instance, we are exploring ways in which tnatural language interfaces can be used to facilitate access to data distributed over different repositories. We are also developing infrastructures to support rapid development and deployment of semantic web services, which can be used to create web applications on-the-fly. We are also investigating ways in which semantic technology can support learning on the web, through a combination of knowledge representation support, pedagogical theories and intelligent content aggregation mechanisms. Finally, we are also investigating the Semantic Web itself as a domain of analysis and performing large scale empirical studies to uncover data about the concrete epistemologies which can be found on the Semantic Web. This exciting new area of research gives us concrete insights on the different conceptualizations that are present on the Semantic Web by giving us the possibility to discover which are the most common viewpoints, which viewpoints are mutually inconsistent, to what extent different models agree or disagree, etc...

Our aim is to be at the forefront of both theoretical and practical developments on the Semantic Web not only by developing theories and models, but also by building concrete applications, for a variety of domains and user communities, including KMi and the Open University itself.