@InProceedings{sandholm93a,
  author =	 {Thuomas Sandholm},
  title =	 {An Implementation of the Contract Net Protocol Based
                  on Marginal Cost Calculations},
  booktitle =	 {Proceedings of the Eleventh National Conference on
                  Artificial Intelligence},
  pages =	 {256--262},
  year =	 1993,
  abstract =	 {This paper presents a formalization of the bidding
                  and awarding decision process that was left
                  undefined in the original contract net task
                  allocation protocol.This formalization is based on
                  marginal cost calculations based on local agent
                  criteria. In this way, agents having very different
                  local criteria (based on their self-interest) can
                  interact to distribute tasks so that the network as
                  a whole functions more effectively. In this model,
                  both competitive and cooperative agents can
                  interact. In addition, the contract net protocol is
                  extended to allow for clustering of tasks, to deal
                  with the possibility of a large number of
                  announcement and bid messages and to effectively
                  handle situations, in which new bidding and awarding
                  is being done during the period when the results of
                  previous bids are unknown. The protocol is verified
                  by the TRACONET (TRAnsportation COoperation NET)
                  system, where dispatch centers of different
                  companies cooperate automatically in vehicle
                  routing. The implementation is asynchronous and
                  truly distributed, and it provides the agents
                  extensive autonomy. The protocol is discussed in
                  detail and test results with real data are
                  presented.},
  keywords =     {multiagent negotiation},
  url =		 {http://jmvidal.cse.sc.edu/library/sandholm93a.ps},
  cluster = 	 {4693751732304685710}
}