Negotiation in DAI as an infrastructure component for collaborative enterprises

The paper examines how negotiation in distributed artificial intelligence (DAI) acts as in integral component for the development of tools necessary to support collaborative enterprises. As an example of how negotiation plays a key part, the author examines its use for conflict resolution among participants involved in the concurrent design of connections in buildings. The Designer Fabricator Interpreter (DFI) System, a knowledge-based tool which fosters interaction among structural engineers (designers), fabricators and erectors is described. The system´s architecture models the participants as semi-autonomous computer agents which reason from their design evaluation perspectives. Alternatives are proposed through a novel incremental negotiation method called knowledge-based negotiation. The resulting negotiation methodology provides for potentially `better´ designs as a result of differing agent viewpoints