Bilateral negotiation of a meeting point in a maze

Abstract

Negotiation between agents aims at reaching an agreement in which the conflicting interests of agents are accommodated. In this paper, we present a concrete negotiation scenario where two agents are situated in a maze and the negotiation outcome is a cell where they will meet. Based on their individual preferences (a minimal distance from their location computed from their partial knowledge of the environment), we propose a negotiation protocol which allows agents to submit more than two proposals at the same time and a conciliatory strategy. Formally, we prove that the agreement reached by such a negotiation process is Pareto-optimal and a compromise, i.e. a solution which minimizes the maximum effort for one agent. Moreover, the path between the two agents emerges from the repeated negotiations in our experiments. © 2014 Springer International Publishing Switzerland.