***** Call for Participation - ANAC 2016 *****
We would like to invite you to participate in the Seventh Automated Negotiating Agents Competition, ANAC 2016. The deadline for submission is 30 March, 2016.

Web site: http://web.tuat.ac.jp/~katfuji/ANAC2016/


*** ANAC 2016 ****
The Seventh International Automated Negotiating Agents Competition (ANAC 2016).
To be held in conjunction with the International Joint Conference on Autonomous Agents and Multiagent Systems (AAMAS 2016), Singapore, 9th-13th May 2016.


*** Overview of ANAC 2016 ***
The ANAC competition brings together researchers from the negotiation community and provides a unique benchmark for evaluating practical negotiation strategies in multi-issue domains. The previous competitions have spawned novel research in AI in the field of autonomous agent design which are available to the wider research community. The focus of this year's competition is on multi-party negotiation in smart energy grids.

The goals of the competition are:
to encourage the design of practical negotiation agents that can proficiently negotiate against unknown opponents and in a variety of circumstances,
to provide a benchmark for objectively evaluating different negotiation strategies, and protocols
to explore different learning and adaptation strategies for opponent modeling, bidding and accepting offers, and
to collect state-of-the-art negotiating agents and protocols, and to collect benchmark negotiation scenarios, and making these available to the wider research community.

The following information is an abstract of the rules of the competition. Full information can be found on the ANAC 2016 website: http://web.tuat.ac.jp/~katfuji/ANAC2016/

*** Entrants ***
Entrants to the competition have to develop and submit an autonomous negotiation agent that runs on Genius. Genius is a Java-based negotiation platform in which you can create negotiation domains and preference profiles as well as develop negotiating agents. The platform allows you to simulate negotiation sessions and run tournaments. More details can be found by following this link:
http://ii.tudelft.nl/genius/

Performance of the agents will be evaluated in a tournament setting, where each agent is matched with other submitted agents, and each set of agents will negotiate in a number of negotiation scenarios. One of the scenarios will be a smart energy grids scenario. Negotiations are repeated several times to obtain statistically significant results.

A negotiation scenario consists of a specification of negotiation issues and preferences of all negotiating parties. The preferences of a party are modelled using additive utility functions.


*** Rules of Encounter ***
Negotiations are multilateral and based on a multi-player version of the alternating-offers protocol. Offers are exchanged in real time with a deadline after 3 minutes. In addition, there will be a discount factor in about half of the domains, where the value of an agreement decreases over time. The challenge for an agent is to negotiate without any knowledge of the preferences and strategies of the opponents.

Agents can be disqualified for violating the spirit of fair play. The competition rules allow multiple entries from a single institution, but require each agent to be developed independently.


*** Main updates with respect to ANAC 2015 ***

This year, we introduce a negotiation theme: “negotiation in smart energy grids”. Each participant is expected to submit a negotiation scenario particularly on “smart energy grids”. That is, each group will submit a negotiation domain description for smart energy grids, and three conflicting preference profiles represented by means of linear additive utility.


For instance, a scenario involving consumers, prosumers and energy providers who negotiate on energy amount and unit cost. Another scenario could involve smart devices that negotiate power consumption scheduling. The participants are very welcome to generate any kind of scenario regarding this domain. Scenarios will be additive as in previous years and can be constructed using the Genius interface or, if preferred, by editing the corresponding XML files. A typical example from ANAC 2012 is the Energy domain submitted by the University of Southampton (http://anac2012.ecs.soton.ac.uk/domains/2012/49), which can be found in the Genisu repository. Since these profiles will be used in the competition, we recommend the participants to submit challenging negotiation scenarios on smart energy grids.

The challenge is to reach an agreement while negotiating with two opponents at the same time as it was last year. This year, there will be a qualification round where each negotiation party will negotiate against the top 3 agents of ANAC 2015, namely:
Atlas Agent
Pars Agent
Random Dance Agent

The top 10 performing agents of the qualification round will continue to the finals and compete with all other finalists. That is we will run a tournament including all finalists on the submitted negotiation scenarios.

The multi-player protocol is a simple extension of the bilateral alternating offers protocol, called the Stacked Alternating Offers Protocol (SAOP). According to this protocol, all of the participants around the table get a turn per round; turns are taken clock-wise around the table. The first party starts the negotiation with an offer that is observed by all others immediately. Whenever an offer is made the next party in line can take the following actions:

1. Make a counter offer (thus rejecting and overriding the previous offer)
2. Accept the offer
3. Walk away (e.g. ending the negotiation without any agreement)

This process is repeated in a turn taking clock-wise fashion until reaching an agreement or reaching the deadline. To reach an agreement, all parties should accept the offer. If at the deadline no agreement has been reached, the negotiation fails.


*** Qualifying Round and Finals ***
Each negotiation party will negotiate against the winners of ANAC 2015: Atlas, Pars and Random Dance Agent. The teams of the top 10 performing agents will be notified, and the final results will be announced at the AAMAS conference.

It is expected that teams that make it through to the finals will have a representative attending the AAMAS 2015 conference. Each team in the final will have the opportunity to give a brief presentation describing their agent.

***Registration Form for ANAC 2016 Intention***
We would like to know who are willing to participate in the competition. By registering your information, we can inform about Genius update and ANAC 2016 information and so on. Letting us about your intention to participate in ANAC 2016 is important for us so that we can inform you about any update.

Please register your information from the following URL: http://goo.gl/forms/ziy0KksaZh

Submission package: The participants will submit their agent source code and class files (in a .zip or .jar package) as well as their negotiation scenario (i.e., domain.xml, profile1.xml, profile2.xml, and profile 3.xml). Please send your submission package by 30 March, 2016 - reyhan.aydogan@ozyegin.edu.tr and katfuji@cc.tuat.ac.jp

*** Important Dates: ***
Deadline for submission: 30 March, 2016
Announcement of the finalists: 10 April, 2016

*** Venue ***
The conference will be held at the Grand Copthorne Waterfront Hotel Singapore.

*** Organising Committee ***
Dr. Reyhan Aydogan, Ozyegin University & Delft University of Technology
Dr. Tim Baarslag, University of Southampton
Prof. Dr. Katsuhide Fujita, Tokyo University of Agriculture and Technology
Dr. Koen Hindriks, Delft University of Technology
Prof. Dr. Takayuki Ito, Nagoya Institute of Technology
Prof. Dr. Catholijn Jonker, Delft University of Technology


*** Prizes ***
The prize money will be at least 1000 dollars. The prize will be shared among the top agents - winners in terms of individual utility.

*** Sponsors ***
Makoto lab. Inc.
TU Delft

*** Contact ***
For any questions, the main contact is reyhan.aydogan@ozyegin.edu.tr