A speech-act-based negotiation protocol

Abstract

Existing negotiation protocols used in Distributed Artificial Intelligence (DAI) systems rarely take into account the results from negotiation research. We propose a negotiation protocol, SANP (Speech-Act-based Negotiation Protocol), which is based on Ballmer and Brennenstuhl's speech act classification and on negotiation analysis literature. The protocol is implemented as a domain-independent system using Strudel, which is an electronic mail toolkit. A small study tested the potential use of the protocol. Although a number of limitations were found in the study, the protocol appears to have potential in domains without these limitations, and it can serve as a building block to design more general negotiation protocols.