Youyong Zou
Lianhe Shao
1 . What is TAC
In the TAC shopping
game, each "shopper" (i.e., an entrant to the competition) is
a travel agent, with the goal of assembling a number of travel
packages (from TACtown to Boston, for a week in July 2000). Each agent
is acting on behalf of a number ( set at 8) of customers, who express
their preferences for various aspects of the trip. Travel packages consist
of the following: A round-trip flight, A hotel reservation, and entertainment
Tickets .All three types of goods will be traded in separate markets with
different rules.The objective of the travel agent is to maximize
the combined preference of its customers. One round of game will last 15
minute.
2.1 Find best plan
when we organize
a travel package for a customer, we will change arrive date from 1 to 4,
change departure date from 2 to 5, change hotel between good hotel and
bad hotel. Compute a u value for every solutions and find the best plan,
which maxize the u value. If the u value is bigger than 0, that means
we can make money from this customer, we will bid for this package.
2.2 Change plan
When the auction is going
on, the price of air ticket and hotel is changing. If we find there is
a better plan, we can still change to this better plan. The prerequirement
is that we have not win anything we currently bidding. ( we donot want
to waste money for one customer ) and this better solution's auction is
still open.
2.3 Air ticket
Flights: All buy
bids are accepted, matching is based on earliest submission time,
quotes and clears are continuous, there is one seller, multi-point buy
bids are allowed, and only the ask price is quoted.
The price of air ticket
is keeping changing and it is continuous clear. The number of air ticket
is unlimited. We will set two reserve time. First reserve time is
500 second, Second reserve time is 100 second. Before first reserve, we
will bid a very low price and try our lucky. Between those two reserve
time, we will bid price a little less than auction's askprice. After second
reserve time, there is no too much time left, we will bid askprice+1 and
make sure we can get the ticket.
2.4 Hotel
Hotels: standard
English ascending, except for fixed final clear. ( Ascending,
Mth price, multiple buy points in bid allowed, no withdrawal, continuous
quotes, quote is ask price, must beat quote, no termediate clears)
After compute the u value,
we will bid the hotel we need. Because hotel bid cannot withdraw, so only
if the hotels we are bidding are failed, we will not change hotel plan.
If the hotel bidding is failed, we will change to new plan which auction
is still open.
2.5 Entertainment ticket.
2.6 Bad agent
Try to bid something
even if I donot need, like hotel, entertain ticket. So I can raise price
and make other agents not so happy. Make sure my agent will not bid too
high price and waste money. Currently, We set our highest bid price
to $1.
3.1 API and BiddingAgent software
Player Name | Score | Allocation Information |
---|---|---|
umbctac1 | 4024.00 | view allocation |
ttrain | 1932.00 | view allocation |
ywan0 | 685.00 | view allocation |
ywan | 0.00 | view allocation |
ttrain0 | -2620.00 | view allocation |
ttrain1 | -2687.00 | view allocation |
ttrain3 | -2909.00 | view allocation |
ttrain2 | -4958.00 | view allocation |
Scores generated Thu May 11 12:44:53 2000 .
Customer | Arrival | Departure | Hotel | Entertainment |
---|---|---|---|---|
1 | Day 4 | Day 5 | Le Fleabag Inn |
|
2 | Day 2 | Day 4 | Le Fleabag Inn |
|
3 | Day 3 | Day 4 | Le Fleabag Inn |
|
4 | Day 2 | Day 3 | Le Fleabag Inn |
|
5 | Day 2 | Day 3 | Le Fleabag Inn |
|
6 | Day 1 | Day 5 | Le Fleabag Inn |
|
7 | Day 4 | Day 5 | Le Fleabag Inn |
|
8 | Day 2 | Day 4 | Le Fleabag Inn |
|
5. Future Work
I have submited letter of participate to ICMAS-00 TAC. So I will keep improving my bidding agent and try to win the Game.6.Reference
Timetable is:I need to improve:
- June 17, 2000 Preliminary rounds
- July 7, 2000 TAC Contest, Boston MA.
- Interexchange of goods : currently we are bidding based one every customer, organize a package for every customer. When we got part of the package, we cannot change plan anymore. If there is interexchange between different customer, assign winning goods to other customer.
- Better allocation algorithm for Entertainment ticket dynamic programming.
- improve bad guy agent: try to make other agent lose more money.