ANAC2020 - 11th Automated Negotiating Agents Competition

NEWS (January 14th, 2021)

ANAC 2020 program is uploaded: here

ANAC 2020 will be held online in the same week of the IJCAI2020. The detailed information will be announced later. We as the ANAC board are working hard to manage the current situation by contacting with IJCAI2020 organizers and will continue to keep you updated as we learn more (December 3rd, 2020).

Finalists of all leagues are uploaded: here

COVID-19 update - New submission deadline: 14th July, 2020.

ANAC 2020 will go ahead, with more than 70 registered participants so far. ANAC will be held in conjunction with IJCAI 2020, which will be held in January 2021. The deadline for submitting agents to each ANAC league is postponed until 14th July, 2020. The winners of each league will be announced in January 2021 during IJCAI - either live or digitally. We will announce a set of finalists in August 2020 (tentative). A select number of finalists will be invited to publish their agent descriptions in the Journal Knowledge Engineering Review. We aim to provide student support to travel to IJCAI. We as the ANAC board are working hard to manage the current situation and will continue to keep you updated as we learn more.

Important Dates (Tentative)

Deadline for submissions: July 14th, 2020 (Please check the website of individual leagues for their specific timeline)
Announcement of finalists: August, 2020
ANAC2020: January jointly held with IJCAI, 2021 (Japan)

General ANAC Website

Previous Competitions

Overview of ANAC2020

The Automated Negotiating Agent Competition (ANAC) is an international tournament that has been running since 2010 to bring together researchers from the negotiation community. ANAC provides a unique benchmark for evaluating practical negotiation strategies in multi-issue domains and has the following aims:

to provide an incentive for the development of effective and efficient negotiation protocols and strategies for bidding, accepting and opponent modeling for different negotiation scenarios;
to collect and develop a benchmark of negotiation scenarios, protocols and strategies;
to develop a common set of tools and criteria for the evaluation and exploration of new protocols and new strategies against benchmark scenarios, protocols and strategies;
to set the research agenda for automated negotiation.

The previous competitions have spawned novel research in AI in the field of autonomous agent design which are available to the wider research community.

This year, we introduce five different negotiation research challenges:

Agent Negotiation and Elicitation (GeniusWeb framework)
Human-Agent Negotiation (IAGO framework)
Werewolf Game (AIWolf Framework)
Supply Chain Management (NegMas framework)
HUMAINE (HUman Multi-Agent Immersive NEgotiation)

We expect innovative and novel agent strategies will be developed, and the submitted ANAC 2020 agents will serve as a negotiating agent repository to the negotiation community. The researchers can develop novel negotiating agents and evaluate their agents by comparing their performance with the performance of the ANAC 2020 agents.

Leagues in ANAC2020

Automated Negotiation League

Representing users in a negotiation: developing an agent that can negotiate while performing preference elicitation.

Details CFP

Human-Agent League

Explore the strategies, nuances, and difficulties in creating realistic and efficient agents whose primary purpose is to negotiate with humans.

Details CFP

Supply Chain Management League

Design and build an autonomous agent that negotiates on behalf of a factory manager situated in a supply chain management simulation.

Details CFP Live Competition

Werewolf Game League

Build an agent that is able to build consensus with other actors (who are potentially deceptive), identify agents of the opposing team and coordinate to vote them out of the game.

Details CFP

HUMAINE

Render as avatars on a display, and the human interacts with them by speaking (in English) and looking at the one with whom they wish to negotiate.

Details CFP

Finalists

You can find the finalist for each league. The ordering does not reflect the actual ranking. They are sorted alphabetically. Note that the actual ranking will be announced in ANAC session during the IJCAI 2020 (January 2021).

Automated Negotiation League

13 submissions

Agentkt: Brown University, United States
AhBuNeAgent: Ozyegin University, Turkey
ANGELparty: The University of Tulsa, United States
Hammingagent: Tokyo University of Agriculture and Technology, Japan
Shineagent: Bar-Illan University, Israel

Human-Agent League

15 submissions

ANACNegoGuide: University of Southern Calfornia, United States
Dona: Independent
Draft: University of Tulsa, United States
Reni: College of Management Academic Studies, Israel
Super: College of Management Academic Studies, Israel

Supply Chain Management League

22 submissions

[Standard League]

Agent30: BIU, Israel
BeerAgent: BIU, Israel
CrescentAgent: Nitech, Japan
GreedyFactoryManager2: TUAT, Japan
Merchant: NEC, Japan
MMM: TUAT, Japan
MontyHall: Brown University, USA
SavingAgent: Nitech, Japan
SteadyMgr: Nitech, Japan
THBiuAgent: BIU, Israel
UnicornAgent: Valencian Research Institute for AI, Spain
WhAgent: Nitech, Japan

[Collusion League]

Agent30: BIU, Israel
CrescentAgent: Nitech, Japan
Merchant: NEC, Japan
MMM: TUAT, Japan
SteadyMgr: Nitech, Japan
WhAgent: Nitech, Japan

Werewolf Game League

[AIWol NLP Task] 6 entries

AzuEmon: Kyoto University, Japan
CanisLupus: Hokkaido University, Japan
ForestLab: Independent, Japan
kanolab: Shizuoka University, Japan
suadere: Independent, Japan
Udon: Independent, Japan

[Protocol Task] 45 entries

Camellia: Aichi Prefectural University, Japan
cube: Kougakuin University, Japan
daisyo: Aichi Institute of Technology, Japan
Foxufoxu: Independent, France
HALU: Kyoto University, Japan
J0hnDoe: University of Tsukuba Sakado High School, Japan
otsuki: Yamagata University, Japan
PaSeRi: Independent
Sashimi: Tsukuba University, Japan
simipu: Shizuoka University, Japan
takeda: Tokyo University, Japan
Tomato: Independent, Japan
Tomo: Shizuoka University, Japan
Udon: Independent, Japan
wasabi: Independent, Japan

HUMAINE

5 submissions + 1 baseline agent

bonnie-agent:Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (RPI), United States
companion-agent: Ozyegin University, Turkey
humaine-agent-2020: University of Tulsa, United States

ANAC2020 Program

15th January, 8am-1pm (UTC), Theater (Zoom online meeting)

	UTC	CET(UTC+1)	Turkey(UTC+3)	Japan(UTC+9)	EST(UTC-4)
Welcome: 10 min	8:00am-8:10am	9:00am	11:00am	5:00pm	3:00am
Automated Negotiation League: 40 min	8:10am-8:50am	9:10am	11:10am	5:10pm	3:10am
Break: 15 min	8:50am-9:05am	9:50am	11:50am	5:50pm	3:50am
Supply Chain Management League: 40 min	9:05am-9:45am	10:05am	12:05pm	6:05pm	4:05am
Break: 15 min	9:45am-10:00am	10:45am	12:45pm	6:45pm	4:45am
WereWolf Game League: 40 min	10:00am-10:40am	11:00am	1:00pm	7:00pm	5:00am
Break: 20 min	10:40am-11:00am	11:40am	1:40pm	7:40pm	5:40am
Human-Agent League: 40 min	11:00am-11:40am	12:00pm	2:00pm	8:00pm	6:00am
HUMAINE: 40 min	11:40am-12:20pm	12:40pm	2:40pm	8:40pm	6:40am
Discussion: 40 min	12:20pm-1:00pm	1:20pm	3:20pm	9:20pm	7:20am

The session in each league will be include:

Introduction, rules and challenge
Agents' strategies
Overall results and award ceremony
Challenge for next year

Organization

ANAC Board Members

Dr. Reyhan Aydogan, Ozyegin University & Delft University of Technology
Dr. Tim Baarslag, Centrum Wiskunde & Informatica (CWI)
Prof. Dr. Katsuhide Fujita, Tokyo University of Agriculture and Technology
Prof. Dr. Catholijn Jonker, Delft University of Technology

League Organizers

Automated Agents League: ANAC Board Members
Human-Agent League: Johnathan Mell, The University of Southern California
Supply Chain Management League: Dr. Yasser Mohammad, NEC/AIST; Amy Greenwald, Brown University, Mark Klein, MIT, Shinji Nakadai and Dr.Satoshi Morinaga, NEC
Werewolf Game League: Dr. Hirotaka Osawa and Dr. Claus Aranha, University of Tsukuba
HUMAINE: Dr. Rahul Divekar, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute; Dr. Jeffrey O. Kephart; Dr. Hui Su; Dr. Maira Gatti de Bayser, IBM Research

Sponsorship Chair in ANAC2020

Prof. Dr. Takayuki Ito, Nagoya Institute of Technology

Scientific Advisory Board

Prof. Dr. Catholijn Jonker, Delft University of Technology (Chair)
Prof. Dr. Takayuki Ito, Nagoya Institute of Technology
Prof. Dr. Carles Sierra, IIIA/CSIC
Prof. Dr. Jonathan Gratch, USC

Contact

For any questions of ANAC2020, the main contact is Dr. Reyhan Aydogan reyhan.aydogan[at]ozyegin.edu.tr