Negotiation within a multi-agent system for the collaborative design of light industrial buildings

This paper is a review of intelligent agents with respect to their use within the Agent-Based Support for The Collaborative Design of Light Industrial Buildings (ADLIB) project. In the ADLIB project, the core objective is to develop a multi-agent system (MAS) framework for the representation of activities and processes involved in collaborative design of light industrial buildings. This includes the planning and fabrication of steel structural components. ADLIB intelligent agents are concerned with modelling action and knowledge in a collaborative environment. The design process that ADLIB's agents are trying to automate is the interaction and negotiation between specialist design team members. Each team member with a different area of expertise will be primarily concerned with his own area of interest. This paper starts with an introduction to intelligent agents. It then moves on to a discussion of agent classification systems and negotiation theories and their applications in MAS. The last section analyses the needs of agents within the ADLIB project. A negotiation protocol and strategy are then presented. (C) 2003 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.