Principal-agent software environments for multi-attribute auctions and multi-bilateral negotiations

该方案的前提是，家庭和小企业将发挥双重作用，即，买家和卖家，他们将积极参与新兴市场。今天，能源的销售和购买创造了这样一个市场。可以设想，未来的智能电器将参与多个市场（例如，食品、洗衣粉、零件和服务）。我们建议智能家电与家庭软件代理进行交互。该代理人将与代表供应商的代理人开展电子采购活动。这里的融合是家庭和其他个体节点成为供应商和购买者，他们以两种角色参与市场。这类家庭和小企业代理人可能发挥的另一个作用是建立虚拟组织，以满足代理人的委托人的需求。这种组织的一个例子是虚拟发电厂，它包括低压和中压家用分布式发电机。代表各个发电机的代理可以一起工作并贡献多余的能量。它们还可能试图影响其委托人的行为，以便向其提供更环保或更便宜的能源或增加其收入。这些例子显示了家庭级软件代理的潜力。

This program is based on a premise that households and small businesses will play dual roles, i.e., buyers and sellers, and they will be actively participating in the emerging marketplaces. Today sales and purchases of energy create such a marketplace. One can envision that future smart appliances will participate in multiple marketplaces (e.g., food, washing powder, parts, and service). We propose that the smart appliances interact with a household software agent. This agent will engage in e-procurement activities with agents representing supply providers. The convergence here is that households and other individual nodes become suppliers and buyers and they participate in marketplaces in both roles. Another role that such household and small business agents may perform is building virtual organizations to meet the needs of the agents' principals. An example of such an organization is a virtual power plant which comprises low- and medium-voltage domestic distributed generators. Agents representing individual generators may work together and contribute excess energy. They may also attempt to influence their principals' behaviour in order to provide them with greener or cheaper energy or increase their revenues. These examples show the potential for the household-level software agents.