Efficient environment management for distributed simulation of large-scale situated multi-agent systems

Multi-agent systems have been proven very effective for the modelling and simulation (M&S) of complex systems like those related to biology, engineering, social sciences and so forth. The intrinsic spatial character of many such systems leads to the definition of a situated agent. A situated agent owns spatial coordinates and acts and interacts with its peers in a hosting territory. In the context of parallel/distributed simulation of situated agent models, the territory represents a huge shared variable that requires careful handling. Frequent access by agents to territory information easily becomes a bottleneck degrading system performance and scalability. This paper proposes an original approach to modelling and distributed simulation of large-scale situated multi-agent systems. Time management is exploited for resolving conflicts and achieving data consistency while accessing the environment. The approach allows a simplification of the M&S tasks by making the modeller unaware of distribution concerns while ensuring the achievement of good scalability and performance during the distributed simulation. Practical aspects of the approach are demonstrated through some modelling examples based on Tileworld. Copyright (c) 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.