MASON: A New Multi-Agent Simulation Toolkit

Abstract

We introduce MASON, a fast, easily extendable, discreteevent multi-agent simulation toolkit in Java. MASON was designed to serve as the basis for a wide range of multiagent simulation tasks ranging from swarm robotics to machine learning to social complexity environments. MASON carefully delineates between model and visualization, allowing models to be dynamically detached from or attached to visualizers, and to change platforms mid-run. We describe the MASON system, its motivation, and its basic architectural design. We then discuss five applications of MA-SON we have built over the past year to suggest its breadth of utility. 1.