Authors:
Isidora Petreska
1
;
Petros Kefalas
2
;
Marian Gheorghe
3
and
I. Stamatopoulou
2
Affiliations:
1
South East European Research Centre (SEERC), Greece
;
2
CITY College and International Faculty of the University of Sheffield, Greece
;
3
University of Sheffield and Dept. of Computer Science, United Kingdom
Keyword(s):
Formal modelling, X-machines, Spatial agents.
Related
Ontology
Subjects/Areas/Topics:
Agent Models and Architectures
;
Agents
;
Artificial Intelligence
;
Artificial Intelligence and Decision Support Systems
;
Bioinformatics
;
Biomedical Engineering
;
Distributed and Mobile Software Systems
;
Enterprise Information Systems
;
Information Systems Analysis and Specification
;
Knowledge Engineering and Ontology Development
;
Knowledge-Based Systems
;
Methodologies and Technologies
;
Multi-Agent Systems
;
Operational Research
;
Programming Environments and Languages
;
Simulation
;
Software Engineering
;
Symbolic Systems
Abstract:
Starting with the notion of modelling biologically inspired agents, this paper focuses on their spatial characteristics. It will be demonstrated that one of the most prominent formalisms in modelling the behaviour of biological colonies, X-machines, cannot provide a neat and effective way to modelling spatial agents (i.e. agents distributed and move through a physical space). We introduce a X-machines variation that besides facilitating formal modelling, will provide grounds towards visual animation of these systems. This approach resulted into a novel progression, Spatial X-machines, without retracting the legacy characteristics of X-machines such as testing and verification strategies. Unlike other formalisms that go behind the concept of treating the agent’s behaviour as one uniform component, Spatial X-machines tend to draw a separation between different types of agent’s behaviour.