Numerical Abstract Persuasion Argumentation for Expressing Concurrent Multi-Agent Negotiations
This addresses the gap in argumentation-based negotiations for multi-agent concurrency, which is incremental as it extends existing formalisms.
The paper tackles the problem of concurrent multi-agent negotiations, which can alter resource allocations, by developing a novel argumentation theory based on abstract persuasion argumentation with numerical information and handshakes, showing it adapts well to such negotiations.
A negotiation process by 2 agents e1 and e2 can be interleaved by another negotiation process between, say, e1 and e3. The interleaving may alter the resource allocation assumed at the inception of the first negotiation process. Existing proposals for argumentation-based negotiations have focused primarily on two-agent bilateral negotiations, but scarcely on the concurrency of multi-agent negotiations. To fill the gap, we present a novel argumentation theory, basing its development on abstract persuasion argumentation (which is an abstract argumentation formalism with a dynamic relation). Incorporating into it numerical information and a mechanism of handshakes among members of the dynamic relation, we show that the extended theory adapts well to concurrent multi-agent negotiations over scarce resources.