Experiences in Simulating Multi-Agent Systems Using T?MS
چکیده
Building multi-agent systems in real, open environments, often means we have to spend significant energy on resolving issues orthogonal to the initial goals of the research. To avoid such overhead many researchers choose to implement, test and evaluate their multi-agent systems in a simulated world. In addition to providing a better-defined and predictable debugging environment, a good simulator can also help evaluate and quantify aspects of multi-agent system and multi-agent coordination in a controlled environment through repeated experiments. In this paper we will describe the simulator we built, which uses the TÆMS modeling language as its primary knowledge representation. We will also present two multi-agent environments built using these tools and how the simulator can be used to effectively implement and test multi-agent systems. 1 Motivations for a Simulated World As researchers in multi-agent systems, we hope to build, deploy, and most importantly evaluate multi-agent systems in real, open environments. Unfortunately, Effort partially sponsored by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) and Air Force Research Laboratory Air Force Materiel Command, USAF, under agreement number F30602-97-1-0249. The U.S. Government is authorized to reproduce and distribute reprints for Governmental purposes notwithstanding any copyright annotation thereon.This material is based upon work supported by the National Science Foundation under Grant No.IIS-9812755. Disclaimer: The views and conclusions contained herein are those of the authors and should not be interpreted as necessarily representing the official policies or endorsements, either expressed or implied, of the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), Air Force Research Laboratory, National Science Foundation, or the U.S. Government.