Simulator Composition

Simulation setup and organisation

The starting point of a simulation is the scenario file. Each simulation scenario is defined by such a file, which is basically a list of all properties and entities that make up a particular scenario. When the Scenario Selector GUI is called, it scans all the available scenario files and gives a list with descriptions. The user can then select a scenario and start the simulation by clicking on Start Scenario. This calls the class SimulatorMain which takes care of the simulators graphical interface and calls clsMain to handle the non graphical simulator background.

SimulatorMain and clsMain both extend modules of the MASON multiagent simulation toolkit that provides the simulation framework. The central module that MASON supplies is the scheduler. Before starting the simulation, the scheduler invokes a start procedure in clsMain which is configured to call clsSimplePropertyLoader to manage the scenario setup (create all entities decision units etc. and apply properties according to the scenario file). Everytime a entity is created, it is registered at the scheduler. Once the simulation is running, the scheduler calls 4 procedures (one after another for all registered objects) for each simulation step. The diagramm taken from the PhD “Human Bionically Inspired Decision Unit” written by Tobias Deutsch shows the principal