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    <journal-meta>
      <journal-title-group>
        <journal-title>AT</journal-title>
      </journal-title-group>
    </journal-meta>
    <article-meta>
      <title-group>
        <article-title>Negotiation and Search*</article-title>
      </title-group>
      <contrib-group>
        <contrib contrib-type="author">
          <string-name>Carles Sierra</string-name>
        </contrib>
        <contrib contrib-type="author">
          <string-name>Barcelona</string-name>
        </contrib>
        <contrib contrib-type="author">
          <string-name>Catalonia</string-name>
        </contrib>
        <contrib contrib-type="author">
          <string-name>Spain</string-name>
        </contrib>
      </contrib-group>
      <pub-date>
        <year>2012</year>
      </pub-date>
      <volume>15</volume>
      <fpage>15</fpage>
      <lpage>16</lpage>
    </article-meta>
  </front>
  <body>
    <sec id="sec-1">
      <title>-</title>
      <p>Most existing negotiation algorithms only work for bilateral negotiations with
linear additive utility functions. Most real-world negotiations however are much more
complex. I introduce in this talk a new family of negotiation algorithms that is
applicable to domains with many agents, an intractably large space of possible agreements,
non-linear utility functions and limited time so an exhaustive search for the best
solution is not feasible. This family of algorithms is called NB3 and applies Branch &amp;
Bound search to find good plans to propose. Search and negotiation happen
simultaneously and therefore strongly influence each other. It applies a new time-based
negotiation strategy that considers two utility aspiration levels: one for the agent itself and
one for its opponents. Also, we assume a negotiation protocol that imposes almost no
restrictions and is therefore also applicable to negotiations with humans. To analyze
the performance of the algorithm I will present the Negotiating Salesmen Problem
(NSP): a new variant of the Traveling Salesman Problem, in which several salesmen
need to negotiate with each other in order to minimize the lengths of their trajectories.</p>
    </sec>
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