A team of researchers from the Polytechnic University of Valencia, University of Alicante and University of Minho (Centre ALGORITMI of the School of Engineering of UMinho) received the IBM Award for Scientific Excellence (1st Prize) for the best demonstration work at the 19th International Conference on Practical Applications of Agents and Multiagent Systems (PAAMS’21) that took place last week at the University of Salamanca in Spain.

The article, by the authors Jaime Andres Rincon, Vicente Julián and Carlos Carrascosa (Polytechnic University of Valencia) Ângelo Costa (University of Alicante) and Paulo Novais (Algoritmi Centre, University of Minho), is entitled: “Nego-Bot: A human-robot trading system” and refers to a platform composed of a low-cost robot and a multi-agent system that uses deep learning algorithms, whose objective is to establish a trading process and persuasively sell items, maximizing their price, and with that profit.

For that, says Paulo Novais from the ALGORITMI Centre of the School of Engineering of UMinho, “we focused on developing an interactive process capable of interacting with humans using a camera, microphone and speaker, to establish all negotiation processes without physical contact. This is relevant because of the current situation of COVID-19 and because of human contact issues. Validation processes with university students revealed a great interest and success in negotiating products.”

Congratulations Paulo Novais!