Title: A reputation-based model for semi-competitive multi-agent systems

Authors: Barouni Foued, Daoud Ait-Kadi, Sehl Mellouli, Angel Ruiz

Addresses: Departement d'informatique et de genie logiciel, Pavillon Adrien-Pouliot, 1065, av. de la Medecine Universite Laval, Quebec (Quebec) G1V 0A6, Canada. ' Departement de genie mecanique, Pavillon Adrien-Pouliot, 1065, av. de la Medecine Universite Laval, Quebec (Quebec) G1V 0A6, Canada. ' Departement des systemes d'information organisationnels, Pavillon Palasis-Prince, Universite Laval, Quebec, G1V 0A6, Canada. ' Departement operation, systemes et decisions, Pavillon Palasis-Prince, Universite Laval, Quebec, G1V 0A6, Canada

Abstract: In an e-business application, an agent chooses its partners according to their reputations while maximising its utility. In this paper, we propose a mathematical model to compute the reputation of an agent. We improve existing models by including additional sources of information in reputation computing. Furthermore, each source of information has a weight that reflects its importance. So we also propose a new approach for computing the weight of each source of information. We show that our model is valid since while adding new sources of information, agents behave as expected.

Keywords: multi-agent systems; reputation; utility; semi-competitive MAS; weight computing; negotiation; cooperation; agent-based systems; mathematical modelling; e-business; electronic business; information sources.

DOI: 10.1504/IJIIDS.2009.025160

International Journal of Intelligent Information and Database Systems, 2009 Vol.3 No.2, pp.146 - 162

Published online: 14 May 2009 *

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