Auctions for robotics panel: talking points

• Robotics setting– Incentives usually don’t matter– Problems are combinatorial/multi-attribute

=> modern work on complex auctions & exchanges can be helpful

– Similar to other MAS (at least from a coordination perspective)

Peer-to-peer negotiation

• Marginal cost based contracting [AAAI-93, ICMAS-95, PhD-96]

– Automated cost computation

– Issues emerging from distributed implementation• Parellellism vs monotonicity

• Avoiding msg saturation

• Termination, …

– Contracting as hill-climbing [AAAI SS-98]

– OCSM-contracts [AAAI SS-98, ICMAS-98, AAAI-99, ICDCS-00]

• Leveled commitment contracts [ICMAS-95, AAAI-96, IJCAI-99, GEB-01, AIJ-02]

– Sequences – cascades [ICMAS-98, J. Econ. Dynamics & Control-01]

Mediated markets

• Removes negotiation process uncertainty => better allocations

• Usually faster as well• Package bidding expressive competition [DCR-01, GEB-

06, Interfaces-06, IAAI-06, …]

– Rich forms of offer constructs

– Side constraints

– Multi-attribute functionality

• Preference elicitation from the different parties (studied for CAs & CEs already) [EC-01, AAAI-02, EC-03, …]

– Focuses the agents’ marginal cost/value computations

Deliberation control

• Heuristically in peer-to-peer negotiation [AAAI-93, ICMAS-95, PhD-96]

• Game-theoretically– Impossibility results [ICMAS-96, ICEC-00, AAMAS-05]

– Using performance profile trees• in auctions [TARK-01, AGENTS WS-01, AAMAS-03, AAMAS-04]

• in bargaining [AIJ-01, AAMAS-02]

Online problem

• Has been studied for multi-unit– auctions [Lavi & Nisan EC-00, …]

– exchanges [Blum, Sandholm, Zinkevich SODA-02, JACM-06]

• Thank you for your attention!

Preference elicitationfrom multiple agents

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Monsters

• Local planning complexity

• Communication complexity

• (Loss of privacy)

Clearing algorithm

What info is needed from an agent depends on what others have revealed

Elicitor

Conen & Sandholm IJCAI-01 workshop on Econ. Agents, Models & Mechanisms, ACMEC-01

Elicitor decides what to ask next based on answers it has received so far

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