ANTS: an API for creating negotiation applications

In this paper, we present a generic negotiation model for multi-agent systems, built on three levels: a communication level, a negotiation level and a strategic level, which is the only level specific to the application. XML files are used to configure the system, freeing the end-user with recompilations each time he wants to change a parameter. The aim of this paper is then to show that it is possible to describe precisely a generic model that we can use in several negotiation problems. This model has been implemented by a Java API called ANTS used to build our applications. ANTS is the only platform which enables the use of different communication systems and of negotiation strategies independent of any attribute like price. These researches on negotiation take place in software engineering works for artificial intelligence and multi-agent systems.