An argumentation system that builds trusted trading partnerships
- Publication Type:
- Thesis
- Issue Date:
- 2010
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In e-Commerce, a buying process typically begins with browsing the available products or services, and then selecting the ones that satisfy a given need. The next phase
is negotiation to reach an agreement. If an agreement is signed between two parties,
they enter into the enactment phase including payment and delivery. After that, they
evaluate how well the products or services satisfy their needs. One of the reasons for
dissatisfaction is that a trading agent does not know its opponent agent's needs, contract acceptance criteria, or behaviour during their interactions. This dissertation is
concerned with the problems and challenges of repeatedly conducted trading activities
in e-Commerce applications.
Argumentation is a mode of interaction between agents that enables them to exchange information within messages in the form of arguments to explain their current
position and future plans with the intention of increasing the chance of success in the
negotiation. How an agent conducts all phases of a buying process through argumentation is an important research query. It becomes difficult to solve this query if an
agent has to repeatedly conduct trading activities with its opponent agents. This work
describes a novel solution to how an agent builds trusted trading partnerships with its
opponent agents.
The requirements of all phases of a buying process are specified by five models:
the needs model, the opponent agent selection model, the communication model, the
agreement model, and the relationship model. The relationship aware argumentation
framework is then proposed. It integrates how the trading agents analyze their interaction history, exchanged information, and any promises made. An agent architecture
is then developed that extends the idea of information based agency. It measures the
strength of business relationships and predicts behavioural parameters from the history
of interactions.
This dissertation establishes the thesis statement, "Modelling the strength of relationships between agents and predicting the behaviour of trading partner agents in a
multi agent argumentation system enables agents to build trusted trading partnerships".
A prototype simulation environment has been developed to conduct the experiments
and to validate the thesis statement. The simulated arrival rate obtained by the proposed model is lower than that of an existing model, e.g., the Trust and Honour model.
The prototype argumentation system demonstrated a proof of concept. The prototype will be further developed before applying the proposed argumentation system in
commercial applications.
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