Cost-based Cooperation of Self-interested Agents

In a multi-agent system with self-interested agents, cooperation has to be achieved though communication and negotiation. The paper presents a model and associated behavior of self-interested agents that are endowed, besides the widely accepted beliefs-desires-intentions notions, with goals, preferences, obligations, and norms. The behavior of the agents is mainly motivated by the gain they may obtain while fulfilling their preferred goals and by the necessity to cooperate with other agents for achieving these goals. The inference rules that guide negotiation are based both on cost and gain, and on the cooperation profile the agent develops during previous interactions with other agents in the system. The model permits the definition of several types of agents by varying their behavior according to obligation compliance, self-interestedness, desire to develop good cooperation relations with other agents in the system or simply desire to obtain the maximum gain.