SIF - the social interaction framework system : description and user's guide to a multi-agent system testbed

Abstract

We present the Social Interaction Framework SIF and demonstrate how it can be used for social simulation. SIF is a simulation testbed for multi-agent systems. The key design aspects are the ability of rapid-prototyping, a broad implementation platform, the possibility of controling agents by human users and easy access to the internal data of every agent in the simulation. SIF implements the EMS (Effector-Medium-Sensor) paradigm, which provides a generic agent-world interface. In this document we describe the architecture, example applications that have been developed at DFKI and we give an easy to follow ten step guide for creating simulations with SIF.