negmas 0.2.22

NEGotiations Managed by Agent Simulations

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NegMAS is a python library for developing autonomous negotiation agents embedded in simulation environments. The name negmas stands for either NEGotiation MultiAgent System or NEGotiations Managed by Agent Simulations (your pick). The main goald of NegMAS is to advance the state of the art in situated simultaneous negotiations. Nevertheless, it can; and was used; in modeling simpler bilateral and multi-lateral negotiations, preference elicitation , etc.

.. note:: A YouTube playlist to help you use NegMAS for ANAC2019_ SCM_ league can be found here_

.. _ANAC2019: http://web.tuat.ac.jp/~katfuji/ANAC2019
.. _SCM: http://web.tuat.ac.jp/~katfuji/ANAC2019/#scm
.. _here: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLqvs51K2Mb8LlUQk2DHLGnWdGqhXMNOM-

Introduction

This package was designed to help advance the state-of-art in negotiation research by providing an easy-to-use yet powerful platform for autonomous negotiation targeting situated simultaneous negotiations. It grew out of the NEC-AIST collaborative laboratory project.

By situated negotiations, we mean those for which utility functions are not pre-ordained by fiat but are a natural result of a simulated business-like process.

By simultaneous negotiations, we mean sessions of dependent negotiations for which the utility value of an agreement of one session is affected by what happens in other sessions.

The documentation is available at: documentation_

.. _documentation: https://negmas.readthedocs.io/

Main Features

This platform was designed with both flexibility and scalability in mind. The key features of the NegMAS package are:

#. The public API is decoupled from internal details allowing for scalable implementations of the same interaction protocols. #. Supports agents engaging in multiple concurrent negotiations. #. Provides support for inter-negotiation synchronization either through coupled utility functions or through central control agents. #. The package provides sample negotiators that can be used as templates for more complex negotiators. #. The package supports both mediated and unmediated negotiations. #. Supports both bilateral and multilateral negotiations. #. Novel negotiation protocols and simulated worlds can be added to the package as easily as adding novel negotiators. #. Allows for non-traditional negotiation scenarios including dynamic entry/exit from the negotiation. #. A large variety of built in utility functions. #. Utility functions can be active dynamic entities which allows the system to model a much wider range of dynamic ufuns compared with existing packages. #. A distributed system with the same interface and industrial-strength implementation is being created allowing agents developed for NegMAS to be seemingly employed in real-world business operations.

To use negmas in a project

.. code-block:: python

import negmas

The package was designed for many uses cases. On one extreme, it can be used by an end user who is interested in running one of the built-in negotiation protocols. On the other extreme, it can be used to develop novel kinds of negotiation agents, negotiation protocols, multi-agent simulations (usually involving situated negotiations), etc.

Running existing negotiators/negotiation protocols

Using the package for negotiation can be as simple as the following code snippet:

.. code-block:: python

from negmas import SAOMechanism, AspirationNegotiator, MappingUtilityFunction
session = SAOMechanism(outcomes=10, n_steps=100)
negotiators = [AspirationNegotiator(name=f'a{_}') for _ in range(5)]
for negotiator in negotiators:
    session.add(negotiator, ufun=MappingUtilityFunction(lambda x: random.random() * x[0]))

session.run()

In this snippet, we created a mechanism session with an outcome-space of 10 discrete outcomes that would run for 10 steps. Five agents with random utility functions are then created and added to the session. Finally the session is run to completion. The agreement (if any) can then be accessed through the state member of the session. The library provides several analytic and visualization tools to inspect negotiations. See the first tutorial on Running a Negotiation for more details.

Developing a negotiator

Developing a novel negotiator slightly more difficult by is still doable in few lines of code:

.. code-block:: python

from negmas.sao import SAONegotiator
from negmas import ResponseType
class MyAwsomeNegotiator(SAONegotiator):
    def __init__(self):
        # initialize the parents
        super().__init__(self)

    def respond(self, offer, state):
        # decide what to do when receiving an offer
        return ResponseType.ACCEPT_OFFER

    def propose(self, state):
        # proposed the required number of proposals (or less) 
        pass

By just implementing respond() and propose(). This negotiator is now capable of engaging in alternating offers negotiations. See the documentation of Negotiator for a full description of available functionality out of the box.

Developing a negotiation protocol

Developing a novel negotiation protocol is actually even simpler:

.. code-block:: python

from negmas.mechanisms import Mechanism

class MyNovelProtocol(Mechanism):
    def __init__(self):
        super().__init__()

    def round(self):
        # one step of the protocol
        pass

By implementing the single round() function, a new protocol is created. New negotiators can be added to the negotiation using add() and removed using remove(). See the documentation for a full description of Mechanism available functionality out of the box [Alternatively you can use Protocol instead of Mechanism].

Running a world simulation

The raison d'être for NegMAS is to allow you to develop negotiation agents capable of behaving in realistic business like simulated environments. These simulations are called worlds in NegMAS. Agents interact with each other within these simulated environments trying to maximize some intrinsic utility function of the agent through several possibly simultaneous negotiations.

The situated module provides all that you need to create such worlds. An example can be found in the scml package. This package implements a supply chain management system in which factory managers compete to maximize their profits in a market with only negotiations as the means of securing contracts.

Acknowledgement

.. _Genius: http://ii.tudelft.nl/genius

NegMAS tests use scenarios used in ANAC 2010 to ANAC 2018 competitions obtained from the Genius_ Platform. These domains can be found in the tests/data and notebooks/data folders. History

Release 0.2.22

• documentation update
• unifying the INVALID_UTILITY value used by all agents/negotiators to be float("-inf")
• Added reserved_value parameter to GreedyFactoryManager that allows for control of the reserved value used in all its ufuns.
• enable mechanism plotting without history and improving plotting visibility
• shortening negotiator names
• printing the average number of negotiation rounds in negmas scml command
• taking care of negotiation timeout possibility in SCML simulations

Release 0.2.21

• adding avoid_free_sales parameter to NegotiatorUtility to disable checks for zero price contracts
• adding an optional parameter "partner" to _create_annotation method to create correct contract annotations when response_to_negotiation_request is called
• Avoiding unnecessary assertion in insurance company evaluate method
• passing a copy of CFPs to on_new_cfp and on_cfp_removal methods to avoid modifications to them by agents.

Release 0.2.20

• logging name instead of ID in different debug log messages (CFP publication, rejection to negotiate)
• bug fix that caused GreedyFactoryManagers to reject valid negotiations

Release 0.2.19

• logging CFPs
• defaulting to buying insurance in negmas scml
• bug resolution related to recently added ability to use LinearUtilityFunction created by a dict with tuple outcomes
• Adding force_numeric to lead_genius_*

Release 0.2.18

• minor updates

Release 0.2.17

• allowing anac2019_world to receive keyword arguments to pass to chain_world
• bug fix: enabling parameter passing to the mechanism if given implicitly in MechanismFactory()
• receiving mechanisms explicitly in SCMLWorld and any other parameters of World implicitly

Release 0.2.16

• bug fix in GreedyFactoryManager to avoid unnecessary negotiation retrials.

Release 0.2.15

• Minor bug fix to avoid exceptions on consumers with None profile.
• Small update to the README file.

Release 0.2.14

• Documentation update
• simplifying continuous integration workflow (for development)

Release 0.2.13

• Adding new callbacks to simplify factory manager development in the SCM world
  • on_contract_executed, on_contract_breached
  • on_inventory_change, on_production_success, on_cash_transfer
• Supporting callbacks including onUfunChanged on jnegmas for SAONegotiator
• Installing jenegmas 0.2.6 by default in negmas jengmas-setup command

Release 0.2.12

• updating run scml tutorial
• tox setting update to avoid a break in latest pip (19.1.0)
• handling an edge case with both partners committing breaches at the same time.
• testing reduced max-insurance setting
• resolving a bug in contract resolution when the same agent commits multiple money breaches on multiple contracts simultaneously.
• better assertion of correct contract execution
• resolving a bug in production that caused double counting of some production outputs when multiple lines are executed generating the same product type at the same step.
• ensuring that the storage reported through awi.state or simulator.storage_* are correct for the current step. That involves a slight change in an undocumented feature of production. In the past produced products were moved to the factory storage BEFORE the beginning of production on the next step. Now it is moved AFTER the END of production of the current step (the step production was completed). This ensures that when the factory manager reads its storage it reflects what it actually have at all times.
• improving printing of RunningCommandInfo and ProductionReport
• regenerating setup.py
• revealing jobs in FactoryState
• handling a bug that caused factories to have a single line sometimes.
• revealing the dict jobs in FactoryState which gives the scheduled jobs for each time/line
• adding always_concede option to NaiveTitForTatNegotiator
• updating insurance premium percents.
• adding more tests of NaiveTitForTatNegotiator
• removing relative_premium/premium confusion. Now evaluate_premium will always return a premium as a fraction of the contract total cost not as the full price of the insurance policy. For a contract of value 30, a premium of 0.1 means 3 money units not 0.1 money units.
• adding --config option to tournament and scml commands of negmas CLI to allow users to set default parameters in a file or using environment variables
• unifying the meaning of negative numbers for max_insurance_premium to mean never buying insuance in the scheduler, manager, and app. Now you have to set max_insurance_premium to inf to make the system
• enforcing argument types in negmas CLI
• Adding DEFAULT_NEGOTIATOR constant to apps.scml.common to control the default negotiator type used by built-agents
• making utility_function a property instead of a data member of negotiator
• adding on_ufun_changed() callback to Negotiator instead of relying on on_nofitication() [relying on on_notification still works].
• deprecating passing dynamic_ufun to constructors of all negotiators
• removing special treatment of AspirationNegotiator in miners
• modifications to the implementation of TitForTatNegotiator to make it more sane.
• deprecating changing the utility function directly (using negotiator.utility_function = x) AFTER the negotiation starts. It is still possible to change it up to the call to join()
• adding negmas.apps.scml.DEFAULT_NEGOTIATOR to control the default negotiator used
• improved parameter settings (for internal parameters not published in the SCML document)
• speeding up ufun dumping
• formatting update
• adding ufun logging as follows:
  • World and SCMLWorld has now log_ufuns_file which if not None gives a file to log the funs into.
  • negmas tournament and scml commands receive a --log-ufuns or --no-log-ufuns to control whether or not to log the ufuns into the tournament/world stats directory under the name ufuns.csv
• adding a helper add_records to add records into existing csv files.

Release 0.2.11

• minor bug fix

Release 0.2.10

• adding more control to negmas tournaments:
  1. adding --factories argument to control how many factories (at least) should exist on each production level
  2. adding --agents argument to control how many agents per competitor to instantiate. For the anac2019std ttype, this will be forced to 1
• adding sabotage track and anac2019_sabotage to run it
• updating test assertions for negotiators.
• tutorial update
• completed NaiveTitForTatNegotiator implementation

Release 0.2.9

• resolving a bug in AspirationNegotiator that caused an exception for ufuns with assume_normalized
• resolving a bug in ASOMechanism that caused agreements only on boundary offers.
• using jnegmas-0.2.4 instead of jnegmas-0.2.3 in negmas jnegmas-setup command

Release 0.2.8

• adding commands to FactoryState.
• Allowing JNegMAS to use GreedyFactoryManager. To do that, the Java factory manager must inherit from GreedyFactoryManager and its class name must end with either GreedyFactoryManager or GFM

Release 0.2.7

• improving naming of java factory managers in log files.
• guaranteeing serial tournaments when java factory managers are involved (to be lifter later).
• adding links to the YouTube playlist in README
• adhering to Black style

Release 0.2.6

• documentation update
• setting default world runs to 100 steps
• rounding catalog prices and historical costs to money resolution
• better defaults for negmas tournaments
• adding warnings when running too many simulations.
• added version command to negmas
• corrected the way min_factories_per_level is handled during tournament config creation.
• added --factories to negmas tournament command to control the minimum number of factories per level.
• improving naming of managers and factories for debugging purposes
• forcing reveal-names when giving debug option to any negmas command
• adding short_type_name to all Entity objects for convenient printing

Release 0.2.5

• improvements to ufun representation to speedup computation
• making default factory managers slightly less risky in their behavior in long simulations and more risky in short ones
• adding jnegmas-setup and genius-setup commands to download and install jenegmas and genius bridge
• removing the logger mixin and replaced it with parameters to World and SCMLWorld
• added compact parameter to SCMLWorld, tournament, and world generators to reduce the memory footprint
• added --compact/--debug to the command line tools to avoid memory and log explosion setting the default to --compact
• improving implementation of consumer ufun for cases with negative schedule
• changing the return type of SCMLAWI.state from Factory to FactoryState to avoid modifying the original factory. For efficiency reasons, the profiles list is passed as it is and it is possible to modify it but that is forbidden by the rules of the game.
• Speeding up and correcting financial report reception.
• Making bankruptcy reporting system-wide
• avoiding execution of contracts with negative or no quantity and logging ones with zero unit price.
• documentation update
• bug fix to resolve an issue with ufun calculation for consumers in case of over consumption.
• make the default behavior of negmas command to reveal agent types in their names
• preventing agents from publishing CFPs with the ID of other agents
• documentation update
• improved Java support
• added option default_dump_extension to ~/negmas/config.json to enable changing the format of dumps from json to yaml. Currently json is the default. This included adding a helper function helpers.dump() to dump in the selected format (or overriding it by providing a file extension).
• completing compatibility with SCML description (minor change to the consumer profile)
• added two new options to negmas tournament command: anac2019std and anac2019collusion to simulate these two tracks of the ANAC 2019 SCML. Sabotage version will be added later.
• added two new functions in apps.scml.utils anac2019_std, anac2019_collusion to simulate these two tracks of the ANAC 2019 SCML. Sabotage version will be added later.
• added assign_managers() method to SCMLWorld to allow post-init assignment of managers to factories.
• updating simulator documentation

Release 0.2.2

• modifications to achieve compatibility with JNegMAS 0.2.0
• removing the unnecessary ufun property in Negotiator

Release 0.2.0

• First ANAC 2019 SCML release
• compatible with JNegMAS 0.2.0

Release 0.1.45

• implemented money and inventory hiding
• added sugar methods to SCMLAWI that run execute for different commands: schedule_production, stop_production, schedule_job, hide_inventory, hide_money
• added a json file ~/negmas/config.json to store all global configs
• reading jar locations for both jnegmas and genius-bridge from config file
• completed bankruptcy and liquidation implementation.
• removed the unnecessary _world parameter from Entity
• Added parameters to the SCML world to control compensation parameters and default price for products with no catalog prices.
• Added contract nullification everywhere.
• updated documentation to show all inherited members of all classes and to show all non-private members
• Removing the bulletin-board from the public members of the AWI

Release 0.1.42

• documentation improvement
• basic bankruptcy implementation
• bug fixes

Release 0.1.40

• documentation update
• implementing bank and insurance company disable/enable switches
• implementing financial reports
• implementing checks for bankruptcy in all built-in agents in SCML
• implementing round timeout in SAOMechanism

Release 0.1.33

• Moving to Travis CI for continuous integration, ReadTheDocs for documentation and Codacy for code quality

Release 0.1.32

• Adding partial support to factory manager development using Java
• Adding annotation control to SCML world simulation disallowing factory managers from sending arbitrary information to co-specifics
• Removing some unnecessary dependencies
• Moving development to poetry. Now we do not keep a setup.py file and rely on poetry install

Release 0.1.3

• removing some unnecessary dependencies that may cause compilation issues

Release 0.1.2

• First public release