A simulation framework for design-oriented studies of interaction models in agent teamwork.

This paper introduces a new software framework for design-oriented simulation studies of interaction models used in agent teamwork. The framework provides a generic simulator that can be instantiated with concrete multiagent system (MAS) models to obtain custom simulators for specific experimental studies. The main purpose of such a custom simulator is to reduce the design decision space through feedback from experiments performed during the early stages of interaction model development. The combined emphases on design-oriented early feedback, low coupling between the MAS models and the simulation environment, openness towards external systems, extendibility, and distributed execution have resulted in a novel architecture which is the main contribution of the paper. An essential feature that facilitates early feedback is the interactive concurrent simulation of multiple teams, with immediate visualization. It enables the experimenter to control the experiment scenario in progress and simulation parameters while observing the behavior and performance of several teams that employ alternative design solutions. The framework also supports the distribution of runs of the same experiment across a potentially large number of nodes in a computing cluster.