A New Quantitative Trust Model for Negotiating Agents using Argumentation

Abstract

In this paper, we propose a new quantitative trust model for argumentation-based negotiating agents. The purpose of such a model is to provide a secure environment for agent negotiation within multi-agent systems. The problem of securing agent negotiation in a distributed setting is core to a number of applications, particularly the emerging semantic grid computing-based applications such as e-business. Current approaches to trust fail to adequately address the challenges for trust in these emerging applications. These approaches are either centralized on mechanisms such as digital certificates, and thus are particularly vulnerable to attacks, or are not suitable for argumentation-based negotiation in which agents use arguments to reason about trust.