L. Bölöni, L. J. Luotsinen, J. N. Ekblad, T. R. Fitz-Gibbon, C. Houchin, J. Key, M A. Khan, J. Lyu, J. Nguyen, R. Oleson, G. Stein, S. Vander Weide, and V. Trinh

A comparison study of twelve paradigms for developing embodied agents


Cite as:

L. Bölöni, L. J. Luotsinen, J. N. Ekblad, T. R. Fitz-Gibbon, C. Houchin, J. Key, M A. Khan, J. Lyu, J. Nguyen, R. Oleson, G. Stein, S. Vander Weide, and V. Trinh. A comparison study of twelve paradigms for developing embodied agents. Accepted for publication in Software: Practice and Experience, 2007.

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Abstract:

We report on a study in which twelve different paradigms were used to implement agents acting in an environment which borrows elements from artificial life and multi-player strategy games. In choosing the paradigms we strived to maintain a balance between high level, logic based approaches and low level, physics oriented models; between imperative programming, declarative approaches and ``learning from basics''; between anthropomorphic or biologically inspired models on one hand and pragmatic, performance oriented approaches on the other. We have found that the choice of the paradigm determines the software development process and requires a different set of skills from the developers. In terms of raw performance, we found that the best performing paradigms were those which (a) allowed the knowledge of human experts to be explicitly transferred to the agent and (b) allowed the integration of well-known, high performance algorithms. We have found that maintaining a commitment to the chosen paradigm can be difficult; there is a strong temptation to offer shallow fixes to perceived performance problems through a ``flight into heuristics''. Our experience is that a development process without the discipline enforced by a central paradigm leads to agents which are a random collection of heuristics whose interactions are not clearly understood. Although far from providing a definitive verdict on the benefits of the different paradigms, our study provided a good insight into what kind of conceptual, technical or organizational problems would a development team face depending on their choice of agent paradigm.

BibTeX:

@article{Boloni-2007-SPE,
    title = "A comparison study of twelve paradigms for developing embodied agents",
    author = "L. B{\"o}l{\"o}ni and L. J. Luotsinen and J. N.
    Ekblad and T. R. Fitz-Gibbon and C. Houchin and J. Key and M
    A. Khan and J. Lyu and J. Nguyen and R. Oleson and G. Stein and
    S. Vander Weide and V. Trinh",
    journal = "Accepted for publication in Software: Practice and Experience",
    year = "2007",
    abstract = {
      We report on a study in which twelve different paradigms were used to
      implement agents acting in an environment which borrows elements from
      artificial life and multi-player strategy games. In choosing the paradigms
      we strived to maintain a balance between high level, logic based
      approaches and low level, physics oriented models; between imperative
      programming, declarative approaches and ``learning from basics''; between
      anthropomorphic or biologically inspired models on one hand and pragmatic,
      performance oriented approaches on the other.
      We have found that the choice of the paradigm determines the software
      development process and requires a different set of skills from the
      developers. In terms of raw performance, we found that the best performing
      paradigms were those which (a) allowed the knowledge of human experts to
      be explicitly transferred to the agent and (b) allowed the integration of
      well-known, high performance algorithms. We have found that maintaining a
      commitment to the chosen paradigm can be difficult; there is a strong
      temptation to offer shallow fixes to perceived performance problems
      through a ``flight into heuristics''. Our experience is that a development
      process without the discipline enforced by a central paradigm leads to
      agents which are a random collection of heuristics whose interactions are
      not clearly understood.
      Although far from providing a definitive verdict on the benefits of the
      different paradigms, our study provided a good insight into what kind of
      conceptual, technical or organizational problems would a development team
      face depending on their choice of agent paradigm.
    }
}

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