View - ResearchGate

Creating Relationships with Computers and Robots 17In chapter 30, Peyman Faratin considers the relationship between knowledge,computation and the quality of solution for an agent involved in negotiation.Starting from a fairly classical game-theory model he relaxes theassumptions in order to approach the situation real computational agents willfind themselves in. His results indicate that the type of cognitive model that theagents have in a negotiation substantially effects the outcome and he concludesthat learning is an important skill for an agent involve in a realistic negotiation.Scott Moss (chapter 31) uses agent-based simulations to try to understandsocial systems. This paper is an interim report on an attempt to understandnegotiation between humans by investigating negotiation between agents. Hegrounds his model with a real example of negotiation: the multi-party negotiationbetween the various parties interested in the Meuse river. In this modelagents negotiation over a multi-dimensional space of possibilities where eachagent will not only have different goals but also attach different importance todifferent goals. His agents learn who to negotiate with based upon observationsof the other agents with respect to properties such as: trustworthiness,reliability and similarity. His result is that although two agents succeed threeor more fail. This indicates that coalitions of agents might be critical to thesuccess of any multi-party negotiation (as well as the difficulty of the task).In chapter 32 Juan A. Rodríguez-Aguilar and Carles Sierra start from amacro perspective to try and design "organization centered" MAS. Like ScottMoss they do not start from traditional a priori models, but take a real humanexample (in this case a fish market) as their guide. From this they abstract whatthey see as the principle institutional components and show how this can leadto an effective open and agent-mediated institution. They claim that claim thatsuch a computational model is general enough to found the development ofother agent institutions.The last chapter of the book (33) by Helen McBreen is an empirical studyof the reaction of people to virtual sales assistants. These assistants are 3Dembodied conversational agents that interact with a customer. She evaluatedcustomers’ reactions in three interactive VRML e-commerce environments: acinema box office, a travel agency and a bank. She found that the customerscarried over their expectations in terms of dress from the real world and thatthey found it hard to trust the banking agent.3. Common ThemesAs mentioned above, many themes that are addressed in the 33 chaptersapply across different chapters. A few selected themes are listed in Figure 1.3.This ‘mental map’ might help readers with specific interests in navigating thebook.