Computational markets comprise a subclass of multiagent systems where the primary mode of interaction is via market price systems. Markets can provide effective decentralized allocation of resources in a variety of situations, and economic analysis a powerful design tool for interaction protocols. For the past several years, my research group has been exploring the space of market mechanisms, and applications to various distributed environments. In this talk, I present an overview of our approach, and highlight results on auction protocols for decentralized scheduling. Elaborations of this problem represent realistic commerce scenarios and present challenges for designers of bidding strategy, as illustrated by observations on the ICMAS-00 Trading Agent Competition.
Michael P. Wellman is an Associate Professor in the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science at the University of Michigan. He received a PhD in Computer Science from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1988 for his work in qualitative probabilistic reasoning and decision-theoretic planning. From 1988 to 1992, Dr. Wellman conducted research in these areas at the USAF's Wright Laboratory. For the past nine years, his research has focused on computational market mechanisms for distributed decision making and electronic commerce. As Chief Market Technologist for TradingDynamics, Inc., he designed configurable auction technology for dynamic business-to-business commerce. He is a AAAI Councilor, Executive Editor of the Journal of Artificial Intelligence Research, and serves on the Steering Board of the ACM Special Interest Group on Electronic Commerce.
Time and Location: 11am Thursday, February 8, 2001. GB 221.