An Agent Infrastructure for Distributed Simulations over HLA and a Case Study Using Unmanned Aerial Vehicles

TitleAn Agent Infrastructure for Distributed Simulations over HLA and a Case Study Using Unmanned Aerial Vehicles
Publication TypeConference Paper
Year of Publication2007
AuthorsCicirelli, F, Furfaro, A, Giordano, A, Nigro, L
Conference NameSimulation Symposium, 2007. ANSS '07. 40th Annual
Pagination231-238
Date PublishedMarch
Keywordsagent-based distributed model, asynchronous message passing, Computational modeling, Computer architecture, distributed simulations, finite state machine, finite state machines, high level architecture, HLA, Java, Laboratories, load balancing, message passing, mobile agents, Mobile communication, mobile robots, multi-agent systems, Multiagent systems, public message interface, remotely operated vehicles, Runtime, unmanned aerial vehicles, Vehicle dynamics
Abstract

This paper proposes an agent infrastructure (theatre) centered on Java for distributed simulations over HLA/RTI. The architecture rests on actors (agents) as the basic building blocks. Actors have a public message interface and encapsulate a state of local variables and a behavior patterned as a finite state machine. Actors interact to one another by asynchronous message passing. At the system level, theatres are used as the execution platforms for actors. Theatres naturally map on to HLA federates. Actors can migrate between theatres for configuration or load-balancing concerns. The paper introduces Theatre and shows its application to a complex simulation model based on unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs). The case study is an open agent-based distributed model where mobile agents follow communication patterns established at runtime

DOI10.1109/ANSS.2007.10