Design of a shared ontology used for translating negotiation primitives

Abstract

In this paper we present the design of a shared ontology, with the objective to translate a variety of negotiation primitives. Our approach focuses on facilitating communication among agents during negotiation process execution. Traditional negotiation systems impose several restrictions on the type and format of negotiation primitives that can be exchanged among agents. In contrast, we propose the incorporation of an ontology-based solution to overcome heterogeneity and provide communication facilities for participation in negotiations based in open environments such as Internet. To evaluate our ontology we implemented a Web service-oriented negotiation system, and incorporated a translation module that uses the ontology as a vocabulary of negotiation primitives. The experimental results show that the incorporation of the ontology improves the continuity of the execution of negotiation processes, resulting in more agreements. © Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2006.