Agent methodological layers in Repast Simphony
| Title | Agent methodological layers in Repast Simphony |
| Publication Type | Conference Paper |
| Year of Publication | 2013 |
| Authors | Cicirelli, F, Furfaro, A, Nigro, L, Pupo, F |
| Conference Name | Proc. of 27th European Conference on Modelling and Simulation (ECMS'2013) |
| Date Published | May 27 - 30 |
| Conference Location | Alesund, Norway |
| Abstract | Repast Simphony (RS) is a popular toolbox for agent-based modeling and simulation (ABMS) of complex systems. It can be used from within the Eclipse IDE with Java being the main implementation language. Moreover, visual modeling is supported by agent flowcharts. Powerful features of RS include contexts and projections which allow the modeler to build e.g. situated multi-agent systems (MAS) which can easily be configured and visualized in the RS runtime system. RS lacks of a reference agent methodology. Rather the modeler is free to define and follow her/his own methodology with RS: procedurally, declaratively or visual-based. This openness was exploited in this work for supporting different notions of agents, thus addressing the modeling needs of various application domains. In particular this paper proposes an embed in RS of an actor model which provides a lightweight notion of agents. The actor model is then used as a kernel for supporting more abstract but rigorous modeling languages like Parallel DEVS (P−DEVS) and time-extended Petri nets. A P−DEVS modeling example is reported to demonstrate the usefulness of supporting multiple agent methodological layers in RS. |