Environment Engine for Situated MAS

In the multi-agent system research community, there is general consensus that the environment is important for multi-agent systems (MAS). However, most researchers minimize the responsibilities of the environment by reducing it to inter-agent communication, or neglecting to integrate it as a main element of their MAS models, which can be sufficient depending on the focus and objectives of their work. As a consequence of these decisions, the potential of MAS is not fully exploited. In some cases, the environment is a key element that cannot be written off as inter-agent communication, as it currently is in classical MAS. In our opinion it is important to focus the MAS around the environment. Reducing the environment to inter-agent communication deprives multi-agent systems of great potential. Our point of view is that the environment is an active entity with its own processes that can change its state, regardless of the activity of its embedded agents. We propose including the environment as an entity with a set of laws. Laws can be considered rules that cannot be broken by agents. However, some researchers have been interested in integrating the environment as first class and have proposed some interesting models. Unfortunately, they are not sustained by practical applications. The aim of this paper is to contribute in two ways: first, to propose an MAS model where an environmental engine is integrated; the capabilities of this model are comparable to those of a physics engine. Second, we propose an implementation of this model and some practical cases where it can bring concrete added value.