Task Analysis, Environment Modeling, and Simulation (TAEMS or TÆMS) is a problem domain independent modeling language

Modeling language

A modeling language is any artificial language that can be used to express information or knowledge or systems in a structure that is defined by a consistent set of rules...

 used to describe the task structures and the problem-solving activities of intelligent agents in a multi-agent environment.

The intelligent agent operates in environments where:

• responses by specific deadlines may be required
• the information required for the optimal performance of a computational task may not be available
• the results of the computations of multiple agents to interdependent subproblems may need to be aggregated together in order to solve a high-level goal
• an agent may be contributing concurrently to the solution of multiple goals

Tasks

The modeling language represents a task structure so that an intelligent agent can reason about its potential actions in the context of its working environment. The intelligent agent needs to determine what goals can and should be achieved, and what actions are needed to achieve those goals. This includes determining the implications of those actions, and of actions performed by other agents in the environment.

The modeling language represents a task structure including the quantitative representation of complex task interrelationships, with the task structure model divided into generative, objective, and subjective viewpoints. The generative viewpoint describes the statistical characteristics required to generate the objective and subjective episodes in an environment; it is a workload generator. The objective viewpoint is the actual, real, instantiated task structures that are present in an episode. The subjective viewpoint is the view that the agents have of objective reality.

Coordination

Coordination of agents is accomplished by the Generalized Partial Global Planning (GPGP) family of algorithms that are used to respond to particular features of the task structure. GPGP is a cooperative (team-oriented) coordination component that is built of modular mechanisms that work in conjunction with, but do not replace, a fully functional agent with a local scheduler. GPGP can be adapted to different problem domains, it allows agent heterogeneity, it exchanges global information, it communicates at multiple levels of abstraction, and it allows the use of a separate local scheduling component.

See also

• Automated planning and scheduling
  Automated planning and scheduling
  Automated planning and scheduling is a branch of artificial intelligence that concerns the realization of strategies or action sequences, typically for execution by intelligent agents, autonomous robots and unmanned vehicles. Unlike classical control and classification problems, the solutions are...
  
  
• Multi-agent planning
  Multi-agent planning
  In computer science multi-agent planning involves coordinating the resources and activities of multiple "agents".NASA says, "multiagent planning is concerned with planning by multiple agents...
  
  
• Multi-agent systems
• Software agent
  Software agent
  In computer science, a software agent is a piece of software that acts for a user or other program in a relationship of agency, which derives from the Latin agere : an agreement to act on one's behalf...
  
  
• Distributed artificial intelligence
  Distributed artificial intelligence
  Distributed artificial intelligence is a subfield of artificial intelligence research dedicated to the development of distributed solutions for complex problems regarded as requiring intelligence...
  
  
• Cooperative distributed problem solving
  Cooperative distributed problem solving
  Cooperative Distributed Problem Solving is a network of semi-autonomous processing nodes working together to solve a problem, typically in a multi-agent system. That is concerned with the investigation of problem subdivision, sub-problem distribution, results synthesis, optimisation of problem...
  
  
• STRIPS
  STRIPS
  In artificial intelligence, STRIPS is an automated planner developed by Richard Fikes and Nils Nilsson in 1971. The same name was later used to refer to the formal language of the inputs to this planner...
  
  
• Hierarchical task network
  Hierarchical task network
  In artificial intelligence, the hierarchical task network, or HTN, is an approach to automated planning in which the dependency among actions can be given in the form of networks....