CfP: Automated Negotiating Agents Competition (ANAC) 2010

[Dmytro Tykhonov]

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Call for Participation

Automated Negotiating Agents Competition (ANAC) 2010


In conjunction with the 9th International Joint Conference on Autonomous
Agents and Multiagent Systems (AAMAS 2010), Toronto Canada

Spring 2010

http://mmi.tudelft.nl/negotiation/tournament
negotiation at mmi.tudelf.nl

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We would like to invite you to participate in the Automated Negotiating 
Agents
Competition (ANAC). The purpose of the competition is to steer the 
research in
the area bilateral multi-issue closed negotiation. Closed negotiation, when
opponents do not reveal their preferences to each other, is an important 
class
of real-life negotiations. Negotiating agents designed using heuristic 
approach need
extensive evaluation, typically through simulations and empirical 
analysis, since it is usually
impossible to predict precisely how the system and the constituent 
agents will behave in
a wide variety of circumstances. Furthermore, there is a need for the 
development of a
best practice repository for negotiation techniques. That is, a coherent 
resource that describes
which negotiation techniques are best suited to a given type of problem 
or domain.
To facilitate research in the area of bilateral multi-issue negotiation 
the GENIUS system
is developed. It allows easy development and integration of existing 
negotiating agents.
GENIUS can be used to simulate individual negotiation sessions as well 
as tournaments
between negotiating agents in various negotiation scenarios. It allows 
the specification
of negotiation domains and preference profiles by means of a
graphical user interface. GENIUS can be used to train human negotiators by
means of negotiations against automated agents or other humans. 
Furthermore,
it can be used to teach the design of generic automated negotiating agents.

The ANAC competition will be held in spring 2010, with the finals being run
during the AAMAS 2010 conference. The reward for the winner of the 
competition
is US$2000 (The prize will be paid only if the number of participants is
sufficient, that is at least 4 participants. In case if the number of
participants is less than 8 the prize will be downgraded to US$1000).

ORGANIZATION TEAM

* Prof. Dr. Catholijn Jonker (organization chair)
* Prof. Dr. Sarit Kraus (organization chair)
* Dr. Koen Hindriks
* Dr. Raz Lin
* Dmytro Tykhonov

TIMELINE

* Design and test your agent in GENIUS yourself.
* Upload your agent on the GENIUS server and try it in tournaments against
agents uploaded by the other teams
* Registration deadline: 31 March 2010 at 12.00 CET
* Test phase of submissions: 1 – 11 April 2010
* Qualifying Rounds: 12-16 April 2010
* Quarter Finals: Monday 26 April 2010, 4 x 4 agents
* Semi-Finals: Thursday 29 April 2010, 2 x 4 agents
* Finals: during AAMAS 2010 (10-14 May 2010), 4 agents