---
title: "Using Gaussian Processes to Optimise Concession in Complex Negotiations against Unknown Opponents"
authors:
  - "Colin R. Williams"
  - "Valentin Robu"
  - "Enrico H. Gerding"
  - "Nicholas R. Jennings"
doi: "10.5591/978-1-57735-516-8/IJCAI11-080"
url: "https://ijcai.org/proceedings/2011/80"
pdf: "https://ijcai.org/proceedings/2011/0080.pdf"
venue: "Proceedings of the Twenty-Second International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence"
year: 2011
pages: "432-437"
track: ""
keywords:
---

# Using Gaussian Processes to Optimise Concession in Complex Negotiations against Unknown Opponents

Colin R. Williams, Valentin Robu, Enrico H. Gerding, Nicholas R. Jennings

*Proceedings of the Twenty-Second International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence*, pages 432-437. DOI: [10.5591/978-1-57735-516-8/IJCAI11-080](https://doi.org/10.5591/978-1-57735-516-8/IJCAI11-080)

## Abstract

In multi-issue automated negotiation against unknown opponents, a key part of effective negotiation is the choice of concession strategy. In this paper, we develop a principled concession strategy, based on Gaussian processes predicting the opponent's future behaviour. We then use this to set the agent's concession rate dynamically during a single negotiation session. We analyse the performance of our strategy and show that it outperforms the state-of-the-art negotiating agents from the 2010 Automated Negotiating Agents Competition, in both a tournament setting and in self-play, across a variety of negotiation domains.