Complex Automated Negotiations have been widely studied and are one of the emerging areas of research in the field of Autonomous Agents and Multi-Agent Systems. These days, AI systems are being developed by companies and organizations to solve various problems. The extensive use of heterogeneous AI systems requires coordination mechanisms based on automated negotiation technologies that could account for the complexity of our society.

The complexity in an automated negotiation depends on several factors: the number of negotiated issues, dependencies between these issues, representation of the utility, negotiation procedural and protocol, negotiation form (bilateral or multi-party), time constraints, negotiation goals, and so on. Complex automated negotiation scenarios are concerned with negotiation encounters where we may have for instance, a large number of agents, a large number of issues with strong interdependencies, real time constraints, concurrent and inter-depended negotiation, etc. Many real world negotiation scenarios present one or more of the mentioned elements. Software agents can support the automation of complex negotiations, by negotiating on behalf of their owners and providing adequate strategies to them to achieve realistic, win-win agreements. In order to provide solutions in such complex automated negotiation scenarios, research has focused on incorporating different technologies including search, CSP, graphical utility models, Bayesian nets, auctions, utility graphs, optimization and predicting and learning methods. The applications of complex automated negotiations could include e-commerce tools, decision-making support tools, negotiation support tools, collaboration tools, as well as knowledge discovery and agent learning tools.

ACAN2022 will discuss, among others, the following aspects and topics of such complex automated negotiations within the field of Autonomous Agents and Multi-Agent Systems, which have distinct relationships with IJCAI main conference topics:

• Complex Automated Negotiations Frameworks and Mechanisms

• Bilateral and Multilateral Negotiations

• High dimension Multi-Issue Negotiations

• Large Scale Negotiations

• Concurrent Negotiations

• Multiple Negotiations

• Sequential Negotiations

• Negotiations under Asymmetric Information

• Prediction of Opponent's Behaviors and Strategies in Negotiations

• Machine Learning in Negotiations

• Simulation Models and Platforms for Complex Negotiations

• Coordination Mechanisms for Complex Negotiations

• Matchmaking and Brokering Mechanisms

• Utility and Preference Elicitation Technologies in Negotiations

• Utility and Preference Representations in Negotiations

• Computational Complexity of Multi-Issue Negotiations

• Negotiations with Humans, Negotiations in Social Networks etc.

• Knowledge Management in Automated Negotiations.

• Moral consideration for automated negotiations.

• Real-life Aspects of Electronic Negotiations

• Applications for Automated Negotiations (e.g. cloud computing, smart grid, electronic commerce etc.)

A considerable number of researchers in various sub-communities of autonomous agents and multi-agent systems are actively working on these and related issues. They are, for instance, being studied in agent negotiations, multi-issue negotiations, auctions, mechanism design, electronic commerce, voting, secure protocols, matchmaking and brokering, argumentation, co-operation mechanisms and distributed optimization.

The goal of this workshop is to bring together researchers from these communities to learn about each other's approaches to the complex negotiation problems, encourages the exchange of ideas between the different areas, and potentially fosters long-term research collaborations to accelerate progress towards scaling up to larger and more realistic applications.

Automated Negotiating Agents Competition (ANAC) Special Session

Since 2010, ACAN has been cooperating with ANAC (Automated Negotiating Agents Competition). This year, we have an ANAC special session, in which we plan to explain and discuss the research challenges addressed in ANAC 2020-2022. The participants with winning negotiation strategies, especially in ANAC 2020 and ANAC 2021, are invited to submit their paper.

Please contact Rafik (rafik.hadfi [at] i.kyoto-u.ac.jp) if you have any questions or requests.