Cooperation based on formal negotiations of constraints

摘要

This paper is concerned with the design of distributed decision support systems for organizations in which several decision-makers have to cooperate. Typical situations can be found in the domain of the distributed management of time and resources (i.e. planning, scheduling, personnel management, allocation of shared resources...). To facilitate autonomy regulations between decision-makers, we propsoe to design tools supporting both local problem solving and cooperation. Our approach is based on a rigorous but non-deterministic use of CSP models and constraint propagation mechanisms. We propos some protocols associated to asynchronous communications whereby decisionmakers coordinate themselves and negotiate constraints. A directed tree is proposed to represent alternatives and partial solutions. We conclude on the specifications of a distributed decision support system that is currently under development.