My colleague Professor Leo Stankevich works with multi-agent system that simulate soccer players.

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/2408811_Polytech100

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/221631155_Data_Mining_Techniques_for_RoboCup_Soccer_Agents

L. Stankevich and D. Trotsky. Multi-agent game environment RoboFIBA. Presentation at International Workshop AIS-ADM-2005, SPb., 2005.

Article Polytech100

Conference Paper Data Mining Techniques for RoboCup Soccer Agents

Aspecs

@Murat: I know most of the agent-oriented methodologies, but I'm looking for specific "agile modeling" features. But perhaps I did not make myself clear enough (or maybe I did not understand anything in "agile modeling" !), as I'm actually more interested in approaches that explicitly allow to involve end-users (through participatory techniques, etc.) into the modeling process and offer a way for them to interact with modelers, for example by running and modifying simulations.

Hi Alexis, thanks for your explanation. Frankly, I am not familiar with 'agile modeling'. Recently at a project in which we encountered with complex system modeling with agent based approach. Since it is a multiparty and multidisciplinary project, we consulted the ASPECS methodology, which permitted everybody in the project to participate in the modeling process, even though it is not at the simulation stage, rather at the modeling stage. Of course, those participants are not end users, but experts at their own field. So, they are more or less familiar with the concepts of modeling... But, If there is anything related to agile-modeling with agent-based approach, I am interested to see it, too.

Dear Alexis you could start with the normative decision making theory (the kernel is the utility theory) and after you could continue with every appropriate adaptive control technique. Following my personnel experience this is a common successful paradigm.

Hi Alexis,

If I understand correctly what you mean, I think what my colleague Pierre Bommel has done in Uruguay with farmers is a nice example of "agile modeling" in simulation. Have a look the paper he presented in ESSA 2011.

Best,

clp

Sorry, I forgot the pdf the file...

Hi Alexis,

I experienced it myself (more or less Agile method) coding the model with a sociologist reading my code of his model aside on a 3 days session, it is also more or less the case of the MAPS workshops concerning the projects... So very Agile-like mood but still nothing formalized or applied "rigorously".

Fred

Thank's Christophe for your comment. I did not even know I had experienced the Agile methodology!

Seriously, I believe that the paper presented to ESSA does not really fit with "agile modeling", but to be true, I don't exactly know how it works. So if someone has an answer to the first question of Alexis, I am also interested!

Pierre

@All: Hi, thanks for your answers ! I'm not quite sure myself if "agile" is indeed the right word to describe what I'm looking for. I've begun reading some of your references and they are quite interesting, anyway.

The approach that I was interested in may be more easily described as a kind of "flexible prototyping", with a continuous loop between modeling and simulating (i.e. any modification in a model is immediately tested in simulations, while any interaction with the simulation can be reflected back on the model). I know I've read a reference to it somewhere, but can't remember in which context (although, given my current interests, it probably had to deal with urban modeling).

Hi Alexis,

"Agile modeling in agent-based simulation" obviously requires tools that ease the agile development process (like JUnit, Maven etc.). We have a paper about it presented in a workshop last year. It is directly about agent-based simulation. You can download it from this link:

http://fedcsis.eucip.pl/proceedings/pliks/107.pdf

Moreover, we have a extended and much more detailed version of this paper which under revision in a journal special issue now. If you are interested in, I can send it's preprint version to you by e-mail. Just let me know.

@Onder : thanks ! Very interesting work indeed (and yes, I would be interested by an "extended" version). It is a bit off the topic of the question, but definitely good to know people are working on testing frameworks for ABM.

Cheers

Alexis

Hi Alexis,

You are welcomed! I think you can even integrate the testing approach in that paper to GAMA. Then you can use an agile method for developing simulations in GAMA.

I just need your e-mail address now for the preprint.

Cheers,

Önder.

Hi Alexis,

Paul Waddell's group in UC-Berkeley has been working on the UrbanSim environment for many years now and have a few papers involving agile modelling that might be of interest. Here's one from last year: http://www.urbansim.org/pub/Research/ResearchPapers/opus_paper.pdf.

Best regards,

Dhirendra.

Hi Alexis,

I think next environment for modeling and simulation - http://www.anylogic.com/ may be interesting for You.

Best regards,

Vladimir

Hi Alexis,

There is one particular paper proposing Scrum on simulation projects presented on WSC 2011 (http://www.informs-sim.org/wsc11papers/304.pdf). It can clarify (or bring more questions) some points in the subject.

Att,

Eduardo.

In reference to the comment on "Agile modeling in agent-based simulation", I have been doing some work in this area off and on. I am using the Mason simulation framework and I used Selenium in the agents so they could interact easily with web pages just as the users would. So the agents interacted with the web app just as a user and I could have users and agents using the system together. I am hoping to maybe do some more work on it soon.

I also would be interested in a preprint of the article mentioned above. I see my name is misspelled, it is actually Price

Dear Michael,

If you can give me your e-mail address, I can send you the preprint of the article.

You can also access its published version from this link:

http://www.palgrave-journals.com/jos/journal/vaop/ncurrent/full/jos201226a.html

Best,

Önder

We have just started looking at the topic of "Test Driven Object Oriented Simulation Modelling" and are planning to extend this to "Test Driven Agent-Based Simulation Modelling" in the near future.

Here is a list of papers we found useful for our studies:

- Sawyer and Brann (2009) How to test your models more effectively - Applying agile and automated techniques to simulation testing

- Dietrich et al (2010) Validating UML simulation models with model-level unit tests

- Nguyen et al (2011) Testing in multi-agent systems

- Djanatliev et al (2011) Veritas - A versatile modeling environment for test-driven agile simulation

- Coyne et al (2008) A methodology for unit testing actors in proprietary discrete event based simulations

- Pitt-Francis et al (2009) Chaste - A test-driven approach to software development for biological modelling

- Guercan et al (2011) Towards a generic testing framework for agent-based simulation models

- Collier et al (2007) Test-driven simulation development using Repast Simphony

- Kleijnen (1995) Verification and validation of simulation models

- Kleijnen et al (1998) Validation of trace-driven simulation models - A novel regression test

Dear Peer-Olaf Sieber,

Rather than "Guercan et al (2011) Towards a generic testing framework for agent-based simulation models", I suggest you check "Guercan et al (2013) A generic testing framework for agent-based simulation models". It is more complete and detailed. You can acces it from the link below:

http://www.palgrave-journals.com/jos/journal/vaop/ncurrent/full/jos201226a.html

or if you cannot access there, you access the preprint of the article from my web site:

http://efe.ege.edu.tr/~ogurcan/

Önder.