Negotiation Networks

本研究涉及协商网络中自主代理的自动协商协议的开发，其中每个代理只能与几个选定的邻居进行协商。也就是说，我们开发的代理可以与其他自私的代理同时进行任意数量的谈判。例如，它们可以是Internet中的路由器，协商路由和丢弃哪些数据包，或者是供应链中的采购代理，决定以什么价格购买什么，或者是web服务决定以什么价格为谁提供服务，或者是传感器网络中的传感器决定进行哪些测量以及将结果转发给谁。我们的研究包括为个人和公司想要使用的自私理性代理构建谈判策略，以及谈判协议，以确保代理的相互作用导致有效的全局资源分配。协商网络问题结合了博弈论中的特征形式博弈和议价博弈、经济学中的组合拍卖和分布式机制设计、社会学中的网络交换理论和计算机科学中的分布式算法设计等特点。我们的研究将这些不同领域的成果汇集到一个框架中，并为自利各方之间资源分配的动态、分布式问题提供算法解决方案，与博弈论和经济学的解决方案形成鲜明对比，后者通常是稳态公理解决方案。这项研究的成功具有潜在的变革性，因为它将为分布式资源分配的协议和有效算法的工程提供基础，这是我们日益增长的高度互联社会中普遍存在的问题。

This research involves the development of automated negotiation protocols for autonomous agents in negotiation networks, where each agent can only negotiate with few selected neighbors. That is, we develop agents that can carry out any number of simultaneous negotiations with other selfish agents. For example, they could be routers in the Internet negotiating over which packets to route and which to drop, or purchasing agents in a supply chain deciding what to buy and at what price, or web services deciding who to provide services for and at what price, or sensors in a sensor network deciding which measurements to make and who to forward the results. Our research involves building the negotiation strategies for selfish rational agents that individuals and companies will want to use, along with the negotiation protocols that ensure the agents'interactions result in efficient global resource allocations.The problem of negotiation networks combines features of characteristic form games and bargaining games from game theory, combinatorial auctions and distributed mechanism design from Economics, network exchange theory from Sociology, and distributed algorithm design from computer science. Our research brings together results from these disparate fields into one framework and provides algorithmic solutions for the dynamic, distributed problem of resource allocation among self-interested parties, in contrast with game theory and Economics' solutions which are typically steady-state axiomatic solutions. Success in this research is potentially transformative as it will provide the foundation for the engineering of protocols and efficient algorithms for distributed resource allocation, which is a pervasive problem in our ever-growing highly-interconnected society.