The 3rd European Forum for the SARL Users and Developers (EuSarlCon21)

In conjunction with the:

March 23-26, 2021, Warsaw, Poland.

Description

The 2021 European SarlCon is the SARL user meeting that is organized in Europe in order to provide a place where SARL users and developers could exchange their experiences. It will be held on March 23-26, 2021 (one half-day in the program of the associated ANT-21 conference), in Warsaw, Poland.

Abstracts and/or short papers are due on January 27, 2021. The papers are expected to be very short (< 2500 equivalent words) through EasyChair. SARL-21 is providing an alternative for publishing longer papers.

Presentations

The following talks will be given during the Forum:

To be completed.

Summary of the Past EuSarlCon19 Discussions

The EuSarlCon 2019 forum was organized in conjunction with the ANT 2019 International Conference. We would like to thank the participants of the forum for their contributions to the discussions. During the forum, four talks were given to the participants. Each of them focused on a specific experience with the SARL frameworks.

  • “SARL and Janus: State of the works and Perspectives”. During this talk, Stéphane Galland summarized the main concepts behind the SARL framework in order to implement Multi-Agent Systems (MAS). It is interesting to note that the current concepts enable the SARL users to create any type of multi-agent system, from reactive agents to BDI agents. Several additional language extensions and libraries need to be included in order to make the implementation easier. These extensions are part of the future developments of SARL:
    • Belief–Desire–Intention (BDI) engine: Sebastian Rodriguez (GITIA, RMIT), one of the authors of SARL, is preparing an extension of SARL for implementing BDI agents. This extension will enable cognitive agents to be implemented in an easier way with SARL.
    • Artifact&Agent: Stéphane Galland (CIAD), another author of SARL, discusses the concept of artifact in order to design and implement a MAS with an agent environment inside. This extension will enable easier implementation of simulators, but also of agent-based Internet of Things (IoT) systems.
    • CRIO Organizational Modeling : the CRIO meta-model was at the heart of the creation of the first Janus agent framework, which is the default run-time environment behind the SARL language. CRIO concepts will be formally mapped to SARL concepts.
    • Simulation is one of the main applications for agent frameworks. SARL will be extended with specific tools for simulation (simulation time management and synchronization, simulated sensors, user interface, etc.)
  • “Traffic Simulation with SARL”. Yazan Mualla presented the architecture of a simulator for car traffic based on the SARL framework. It is based on several standards from agent-based simulation: a) agent environment definition from E4MAS conference that includes the definition of the road network; b) influence-reaction model (Michel, F., 2007) in order to support simultaneous actions from agents into the agent environment; c) intelligent driver model has a part of the agent behaviors for computing the instant acceleration of each vehicle; d) A* and D* algorithms into each agent behavior in order to enable them to search for a (shortest) path into the road network. The model was applied in several applications that were presented by Yazan Mualla. Interesting discussions have been opened by the participants related to the autonomy of the agents considering that a part of the system is supported by the agent environment (outside the agents). Another discussion was opened related to the differences between SARL and MATSim in this context, and their complementary. SARL was designed for implementing general MAS. In this context of traffic simulation, agent-oriented control algorithms and physical behavior of the car could be implemented and/or simulated in SARL. Additionally, with the Space concept in SARL, it is easy to implement additional MAS, such as IoT networks, V2X communication (X is infrastructure, vehicle, or human), etc.
  • “Software Architecture for Drone Simulation in 3D”. Alexandre Lombard presented an engineering experience of the implementation of a drone simulation based on SARL and the AirSim framework. A general architecture is provided in order to connect SARL to another simulator in order to simulate the physical motion behavior of the drones in the air. Videos presented by Alexandre Lombard showed that the created simulation framework provides a real agent-oriented tool for implementing drones. A discussion was opened on the possible agent behaviors that may be considered in order to control the whole drone population. A model inspired from the Hellbing forces was presented, and ideas inspired from airplane corridors were discussed.
  • “Introduction to SARL”. Sunil Karamchandani described a pedagogical experience in his University. SARL was taught to electrical and electronic engineering students. An interesting point is that the students did not have a strong background in computer programming and in Java language. The concepts and the abstraction level of SARL make the students able to create small and pedagogical software applications. Discussions have been focused on the method and the feedback from this population of students in order to understand why SARL was easy to be used, and what could be the possible progresses to apply to it.

As a conclusion, the discussions at the forum were interesting and constructive. All the participants have contributed by their questions and their comments to the discussions. Additionally, the feedback on the SARL framework was very positive and will help the SARL developers to focus their future works on directions that will be helpful to the users.

[Michel, F. (2007)] The IRM4S model: the influence/reaction principle for multiagent based simulation. In AAMAS’07: Proceedings of the 6th international joint conference on Autonomous agents and multiagent systems, pages 1–3, New York, NY, USA. ACM.

Submissions

You are invited to submit the abstract in PDF format on EasyChair, not exceeding 1000 words in length.

Publication

Abstracts and slides of the presentations will be published on the website of European SarlCon 2021.

Organization Committee

General Chair

  • Stéphane GALLAND (UBFC, France)

Program Chair

  • Yazan MUALLA (UBFC, France)

Registration

Because EuSarlCon21 is organized in conjunction with ANT21, there is no specific fee for EuSarlCon21 itself, but for the ANT21 conference, which provides the access to its facilities. You must register yourself to the ANT21 in order to be included in the list of the participants. When registering, you could select the specific fee of EuSarlCon21 about 100 euros.

Venue, Accommodation & Visa Requirements

The date and hour of the forum will be published as soon as the program of the associated ANT-21 conference is fixed.

Please visit the ANT21 Venue & Accommodation Page for more information.