SASSY: a design for a scalable agent-based simulation system using a distributed discrete event infrastructure

ABSTRACT

The PDES literature offers a rich set of techniques for distributed and efficient simulation. However, there is a growing need for simulators that support agent-based applications, and PDES systems are not always well suited for these applications. Example agent-based applications include simulation of biological systems such as ants and bees, multi-robot systems and battlefield simulations. The robotics research community has developed agent-based simulators that provide useful APIs for agent applications. However, such simulators have performance limitations, and they do not scale well. Our approach is to provide middleware between an agent-based API and a PDES simulation kernel. The result is a simulation system that offers an agent-based API for the programmer to a high performance PDES system. Here we describe our design and initial implementation of SASSY, the Scalable Agents Simulation System. We describe our initial implementation and compare the design with related approaches.

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