Title: An architecture for scalable simulation of systems of cognitive agents

Authors: Tobias Ahlbrecht; Jürgen Dix; Niklas Fiekas; Michael Köster; Philipp Kraus; Jörg P. Müller

Addresses: Department of Informatics, Clausthal University of Technology, Julius-Albert-Str. 4 D-38678 Clausthal-Zellerfeld, Germany ' Department of Informatics, Clausthal University of Technology, Julius-Albert-Str. 4 D-38678 Clausthal-Zellerfeld, Germany ' Department of Informatics, Clausthal University of Technology, Julius-Albert-Str. 4 D-38678 Clausthal-Zellerfeld, Germany ' Department of Informatics, Clausthal University of Technology, Julius-Albert-Str. 4 D-38678 Clausthal-Zellerfeld, Germany ' Department of Informatics, Clausthal University of Technology, Julius-Albert-Str. 4 D-38678 Clausthal-Zellerfeld, Germany ' Department of Informatics, Clausthal University of Technology, Julius-Albert-Str. 4 D-38678 Clausthal-Zellerfeld, Germany

Abstract: Using purely agent-based platforms for any kind of simulation requires to address the following challenges: 1) scalability; 2) efficient memory management; 3) modelling. While dedicated professional simulation tools usually provide rich domain libraries and advanced visualisation techniques, and support the simulation of large scenarios, they do not allow for 'agentisation' of single components. We are trying to bridge this gap by developing a distributed, scalable multi-agent simulation platform, MASeRaTi, addressing the three problems mentioned above. It allows to plug-in both dedicated simulation tools as well as the agentisation of certain components of the system. We describe the system architecture, which consists of a lightweight kernel and an agent-modelling layer, on top of which applications reside. An evaluation of the platform is provided by: 1) a proof-of-concept implementation of the well-known cow scenario used in the multi-agent programming contest; 2) experimentally investigating scalability in comparison to the Jason platform.

Keywords: distributed simulation; scalability; multi-agent systems; MAS; agent-based systems; modelling; cognitive agents; scheduling; memory management; multi-agent programming.

DOI: 10.1504/IJAOSE.2016.080897

International Journal of Agent-Oriented Software Engineering, 2016 Vol.5 No.2/3, pp.232 - 265

Received: 24 Nov 2015
Accepted: 19 Sep 2016
Published online: 10 Dec 2016 *

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