Agent-Directed Simulation 2007 (ADS'07) Tutorial

part of the

Spring Simulation Multiconference 2007 (SpringSim'07)

Modeling and Simulation with the Brahms Agent Environment

Tutorial Sessions:

Tuesday, 27 March 2007, 6:00pm - 9:00pm
Wednesday, 28 March 2007, 1:00pm - 5:00pm

Sign Up: Please send email to Chin Seah by Tuesday, 20 March 2007.

Presenters

Maarten Sierhuis, Ph.D.
USRA/RIACS - NASA Ames Research Center

Chin Seah
SAIC- NASA Ames Research Center

What is Brahms ?

Brahms is an agent-based modeling and simulation environment:

for developing simulations of people, organizations, objects such as tools, documents and systems and
for designing, simulating and implementing multi-agent software systems.

The Brahms environment includes an agent-oriented language, compiler and virtual machine, as well as a development environment and a post-execution viewer of agent execution, communication and interaction. Brahms models are not like traditional task or functional analysis of work processes that leave out people’s practices, especially how environmental conditions come to be detected and how problems are resolved. Cognitive modeling tools (e.g. SOAR, ACT-R) focus on detailed modeling of individual cognitive tasks. In contrast, Brahms focuses on how informal, circumstantial, and located behaviors of a group of individuals interact, where communication and synchronization occurs, such that the task contributions of people and machines flow together to accomplish goals. Brahms can also be used to design and implement software agents that incorporate models of people’s work practice. Brahms enables the creation of multi-agent models that include aspects of reasoning found in cognitive models, task execution, plus the impact of geography, such as agent movement and physical changes in the environment.

What will be part of the Brahms Tutorial ?

The tutorial will provide an overview of the Brahms language using the development environment and post-execution viewer. By considering a simple "day in the life of a student” scenario we will show the use of Brahms as an agent-based modeling and simulation tool.

Requirements:

Attendees are strongly encouraged to bring a laptop running Microsoft XP SP2 to install Brahms, view the model and run a simulation.

Handouts:

A set of presentation slides (created in Microsoft PowerPoint™) to accompany the lecture
A CD containing the Brahms environment, documentation of tutorial, Brahms tutorial model & simulation and the Brahms website.

Schedule:

	Session 1: Tuesday, 27 March 2007, 6:00pm - 9:00pm
	Session 2: Wednesday, 28 March 2007, 1:00pm - 5:00pm

References

[1] Alessandro Acquisti, William J. Clancey, Ron van Hoof, Mike Scott & Maarten Sierhuis: “Brahms Tutorial”, http://www.agentisolutions.com/documentation/tutorial/tt_title.htm, Version 1.0, July 2003.

[2] Clancey, W. J. (2002). "Simulating Activities: Relating Motives, Deliberation, and Attentive Coordination." Cognitive Systems Research, 3(3), 471-499.

[3] Clancey, W. J., Sachs, P., Sierhuis, M., and van Hoof, R. (1998). "Brahms: Simulating practice for work systems design." International Journal on Human-Computer Studies, 49, 831-865.

[4] Sierhuis, M. (2001). "Modeling and Simulating Work Practice; Brahms: A multiagent modeling and simulation language for work system analysis and design," Ph.D. thesis, University of Amsterdam, SIKS Dissertation Series No. 2001-10, Amsterdam, The Netherlands.

[5] Sierhuis, M., and Clancey, W. J. (2002). "Modeling and Simulating Work Practice: A human-centered method for work systems design." IEEE Intelligent Systems, Volume 17(5)(Special Issue on Human-Centered Computing).

[6] Sierhuis, M., Clancey, W. J., Seah, C., Trimble, J. P., and Sims, M. H. (2003). "Modeling and Simulation for Mission Operations Work System Design." Journal of Management Information Systems, Vol. 19(No. 4), 85-129.

Presenters Biographies

MAARTEN SIERHUIS is a senior research scientist at the Research Institute for Advanced Computer Science (RIACS is an institute of the Universities Space Research Association at NASA Ames Research Center), where he manages the Brahms project on modeling and simulating work practice. His research interests are agent-oriented languages and their application to the development of human-centered systems. Before joining RIACS, he was a member of the Work Systems Design group and the Expert Systems laboratory of NYNEX Science & Technology. He also developed expert systems as a senior knowledge engineer at IBM and in the Netherlands. He received an engineering degree in Higher Informatics from the Hague Polytechnic and a Ph.D. from the Department of Social Science Informatics at the University of Amsterdam.

CHIN SEAH is a computer scientist at Science Applications International Corporation (SAIC), working at NASA Ames Research Center on the Brahms project. He is applying the Brahms work system design and modeling approach to the MER mission operations system. Before joining the Brahms team, he worked as a business process management consultant at Andersen Consulting and as a knowledge engineer at Mindbox, Inc. implementing rule-based and case-based expert systems. He has a B.S. in computer engineering from Santa Clara University and an M.S. in computer information science from the University of Pennsylvania where he did research in natural language processing and computer graphics.

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