Simulation of Multiple Time-Pressured Agents

The paper describes a simulation substrate that allows thinking agents to interact with a world. The world is simulated by standard discrete event simulation, but the timing of an agent’s behavior is determined by the amount of computation it performs. Therefore, if an agent thinks a lot about what to do given a situation in the world, the duration of its thinking results in a delay to its subsequent actions. Thus, the thinking of the agent is time pressured. The computation time of the agent is automatically assessed by the substrate in a way that is independent of the computer running the simulation. This is done by implementing the thinking of the agents in a variant of Common Lisp called Timed Common Lisp, in which each function advances a clock by an appropriate, user-specifiable amount of time. This renders agent thinking and behaviors deterministic, making results comparable and replicatable across platforms. The simulation substrate also supports the interaction of continuo...

• Type: Conference
• Year: 1997
• Where: WSC
• Authors: Scott D. Anderson
• Keywords: Common Lisp, Discrete Event Simulation, Modeling And Simulation, Simulation Substrate, WSC 1997