MAS-DisCoSim 4 PDP: a testbed for multi-agent solutions to PDPs

This demo illustrates MAS-DisCoSim 4 PDP, a testbed environment for evaluating distributed multi-agent system solutions to pickup and delivery problems (PDPs). PDPs are well-studied problems in operational research, and provide a quite suitable context for testing and evaluating a wide variety of distributed solutions, using particular reasoning and/or coordination mechanisms. The testbed provides a reusable simulation framework, and a particular model for PDP environments. The demo illustrates the testbed by showing two MAS-based solutions, one based on gradient field coordination, a second solution based on the coordination mechanism called 'delegate MAS'. The demo is interactive: a user can select any part of a map, downloaded from the OpenStreetMap website, can run various experiments, and can change - during simulation - various problem and solution characteristics and observe their effect.