Implementation of a multiagent system for competitive environments on the WWW

Agents have been receiving a lot of attention as software which behaves autonomously and efficiently on a network and supports human social interactions. Various agent systems have already been proposed. A conventional agent‐based system is based on the assumption that all interacting agents are trustworthy. In practice, however, there are many instances in which agents must compete in an environment in which the other agents cannot be trusted. Thus, in this paper the authors discuss the development of an electronic commerce system which uses agents that behave competitively. The agents in this system can determine autonomously the level of uncertainty in a transaction, then make decisions flexibly. In addition, the authors argue for the validity of their system using operational examples in which their system is used in various market scenarios. © 2002 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Syst Comp Jpn, 33(14): 34–49, 2002; Published online in Wiley InterScience ( www.interscience.wiley.com ). DOI 10.1002/scj.10032