Tapir: the Evolution of an Agent Control Language

Abstract

Tapir is a general purpose, semi-declarative agent control language that extends and enhances the Hierarchical Agent Control (HAC) architecture [1]. Tapir incorporates the lessons learned from de-veloping HAC and makes it easier and faster to create reusable and understandable actions. Tapir has been used in a battalion level war-game simulation, a robot simulator, a simulation of cel-lular dynamics and a simulation of rodent behavior. The language is built around constructs that define agents, sensors, actions, and messages. It has mechanisms for handling multiple agents, a flexi-ble resource model, and multiple means for structuring concurrent actions. This paper provides an overview of HAC and its short-comings and then explains how Tapir extends and improves upon it. 1.