C-Selection: A mechanism for structuring software agent conversation

This paper focuses on structuring a multi agent system´s negotiation using C-Selection. It is a mechanism to facilitate the negotiation process that involves the combination of decision making, conversation protocol and communication language. The framework consists of components like negotiation parameters; negotiation phases; term distribution, interaction protocol and locution determination. Negotiation parameters are categorized as input to agents; negotiation phases are state transition of agents; term distribution relates to the agent communication language; interaction protocol concern rules for agent communication and locution determination involves locution determination and selection. Our negotiation phases consists of initialization, observation, planning, argumentation and conclusive. The planning receives incoming inputs from the observation phase as well as the argumentation phases in coming up with a decision. The planning component is based on the BDI architecture. Our BDI agent can communicate in a structure way from initialization phase, observation phase, argumentation phase and conclusive phase.