GNU/Linux AI & Alife HOWTO: Agents & Robotics

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## 6. Agents & Robotics

Software brains for computers that do stuff. Everythin from fun and games to data mining to physical robotics. This is a great hobbiest area of AI with many areas of interest to pursue. I've broken it down loosely into 2 sections. AI for purely software based agents and that for embodied agents (even if only simulated).

## 6.1 Software Agents

Also known as intelligent software agents or just agents, this area of AI research deals with simple applications of small programs that aid the user in his/her work. They can be mobile (able to stop their execution on one machine and resume it on another) or static (live in one machine). They are usually specific to the task (and therefore fairly simple) and meant to help the user much as an assistant would.

3APL

  - Web site: www.cs.uu.nl/3apl/
  - Wikipedia entry: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/3APL
  - Mobile version: www.cs.uu.nl/3apl-m/

  3APL is a programming language for implementing cognitive agents. It provides programming constructs for implementing agents' beliefs, goals, basic capabilities (such as belief updates, external actions, or communication actions) and a set of practical reasoning rules through which agents' goals can be updated or revised. The 3APL programs are executed on the 3APL platform. Each 3APL program is executed by means of an interpreter that deliberates on the cognitive attitudes of that agent.

Agent

  - FTP site: www.cpan.org/modules/by-category/23_Miscellaneous_Modules/Agent/

  The Agent is a prototype for an Information Agent system. It is both platform and language independent, as it stores contained information in simple packed strings. It can be packed and shipped across any network with any format, as it freezes itself in its current state.

agentTool

  - Web site: macr.cis.ksu.edu/projects/agentTool/agentool.htm
  - Download site: macr.cis.ksu.edu/projects/agentTool/registration.htm

  Another Java based agent development framework. Fairly unique in that it emphasizes the use of a GUI for designing the system which will "semi-automatically synthesize multiagent systems to meet those requirements". You need a java enabled browser to download. :P

Aglets Workbench

  - Web site: www.trl.ibm.com/aglets/index_e.htm

  An aglet is a Java object that can move from one host on the Internet to another. That is, an aglet that executes on one host can suddenly halt execution, dispatch to a remote host, and resume execution there. When the aglet moves, it takes along its program code as well as its state (data). A built-in security mechanism makes it safe for a computer to host untrusted aglets. The Java Aglet API (J-AAPI) is a proposed public standard for interfacing aglets and their environment. J-AAPI contains methods for initializing an aglet, message handling, and dispatching, retracting, deactivating/activating, cloning, and disposing of the aglet. J-AAPI is simple, flexible, and stable. Application developers can write platform-independent aglets and expect them to run on any host that supports J-AAPI.

AJA

  - Web site: home.arcor.de/michal.badonsky/AJA/

  AJA (Adaptable Java Agents) consists of two programming languages. HADL (Higher Agent Definition Language) is a higher-level language used for the description of the main agent parts. Java+ is the lower-level language used for the programming of the agent parts defined in HADL. It is actually Java enriched with the constructs for accessing higher-level agent parts defined in HADL.

A.L.I.C.E.

  - Web site: www.alicebot.org

  The ALICE software implements AIML (Artificial Intelligence Markup Language), a non-standard evolving markup language for creating chat robots. The primary design feature of AIML is minimalism. Compared with other chat robot languages, AIML is perhaps the simplest. The pattern matching language is very simple, for example permitting only one wild-card ('*') match character per pattern. AIML is an XML language, implying that it obeys certain grammatical meta-rules. The choice of XML syntax permits integration with other tools such as XML editors. Another motivation for XML is its familiar look and feel, especially to people with HTML experience.

Ara

  - Web site: wwwagss.informatik.uni-kl.de/Projekte/Ara/index_e.html

  Ara is a platform for the portable and secure execution of mobile agents in heterogeneous networks. Mobile agents in this sense are programs with the ability to change their host machine during execution while preserving their internal state. This enables them to handle interactions locally which otherwise had to be performed remotely. Ara's specific aim in comparison to similar platforms is to provide full mobile agent functionality while retaining as much as possible of established programming models and languages.

Bee-gent

  - Web site: www2.toshiba.co.jp/beegent/index.htm

  Bee-gent is a new type of development framework in that it is a 100% pure agent system. As opposed to other systems which make only some use of agents, Bee-gent completely "Agentifies" the communication that takes place between software applications. The applications become agents, and all messages are carried by agents. Thus, Bee-gent allows developers to build flexible open distributed systems that make optimal use of existing applications.

Bond

  - Web site: bond.cs.ucf.edu

  Yet another java agent system...

  Bond is a Java based distributed object system and agent framework. It implements a message based middleware and associated services like directory, persistence, monitoring and security. Bond allows to easily build multi agent, distributed applications. Another application of Bond will be a Virtual Laboratory supporting data annotation and metacomputing.

Cougaar

  - Web site: www.cougaar.org/

  Cougaar is java-based architecture for the construction of large-scale distributed agent-based applications. It is the product of a multi-year DARPA research project into large scale agent systems and includes not only the core architecture but also a variety of demonstration, visualization and management components to simplify the development of complex, distributed applications. [Yet another java based agent system -- ed.]

D'Agent (was AGENT TCL)

  - Web site: agent.cs.dartmouth.edu/software/agent2.0/
  - FTP site: ftp.cs.dartmouth.edu/pub/agents/

  A transportable agent is a program that can migrate from machine to machine in a heterogeneous network. The program chooses when and where to migrate. It can suspend its execution at an arbitrary point, transport to another machine and resume execution on the new machine. For example, an agent carrying a mail message migrates first to a router and then to the recipient's mailbox. The agent can perform arbitrarily complex processing at each machine in order to ensure that the message reaches the intended recipient.

DIET Agents

  - Web site: diet-agents.sourceforge.net

  DIET Agents is a lightweight, scalable and robust multi-agent platform in Java. It is especially suitable for rapidly developing P2P prototype applications and/or adaptive, distributed applications that use bottom-up, nature-inspired techniques.

FishMarket

  - Web site: www.iiia.csic.es/Projects/fishmarket/

  FM - The FishMarket project conducted at the Artificial Intelligence Research Institute (IIIA-CSIC) attempts to contribute in that direction by developing FM, an agent-mediated electronic auction house which has been evolved into a test-bed for electronic auction markets. The framework, conceived and implemented as an extension of FM96.5 (a Java-based version of the Fishmarket auction house), allows to define trading scenarios based on fish market auctions (Dutch auctions). FM provides the framework wherein agent designers can perform controlled experimentation in such a way that a multitude of experimental market scenarios--that we regard as tournament scenarios due to the competitive nature of the domain-- of varying degrees of realism and complexity can be specified, activated, and recorded; and trading (buyer and seller) heterogeneous (human and software) agents compared, tuned and evaluated.

Grasshopper

  - Web site: www.grasshopper.de/

  Another Java agent system. Full featured and actively developed. Commercial, but free. Historically targeted at embedded systems.

Hive

  - Web site: hive.sourceforge.net

  Hive is a Java software platform for creating distributed applications. Using Hive, programmers can easily create systems that connect and use data from all over the Internet. At its heart, Hive is an environment for distributed agents to live, communicating and moving to fulfill applications. We are trying to make the Internet alive.

ICM

  - Web site (bad link?): www.nar.fujitsulabs.com/
  - SourceForge site: sourceforge.net/projects/networkagent/

  The Inter-Agent Communication Model (ICM) is a communication mechanism that can be used for sending messages between agents in an asynchronous fashion. Its intended application area is as a transportation mechanism for agent communication languages (ACLs), such as KQML and FIPA's ACL.

Jacomma

  - Web site: jacomma.sourceforge.net
  - SourceForge site: sourceforge.net/projects/jacomma/

  Jacomma is an agent development platform/framework for developing distributed, mobile, and reactive information agents with heterogeneous communication capabilities, in Java and JPython.

  Jacomma provides a development framework and an execution environment, which sits on top of the Inter-Agent Communication Model infrastructure. The ICM defines a communication protocol, a store and forward messaging architecture, and low level communication infrastructure for message exchange. Communication is truly asynchronous, based on TCP sockets.

  ICM has an entry in this howto, or you can find it via a link off the site.

Jade

  - Web site: sharon.cselt.it/projects/jade/

  JADE (Java Agent DEvelopment Framework) is a software framework fully implemented in Java language. It simplifies the implementation of multi-agent systems through a middle-ware that claims to comply with the FIPA specifications and through a set of tools that supports the debugging and deployment phase. The agent platform can be distributed across machines (which not even need to share the same OS) and the configuration can be controlled via a remote GUI. The configuration can be even changed at run-time by moving agents from one machine to another one, as and when required.

JAM Agent

  - Web site: www.marcush.net/IRS/irs_downloads.html

  JAM supports both top-down, goal-based reasoning and bottom-up data-driven reasoning. JAM selects goals and plans based on maximal priority if metalevel reasoning is not used, or user-developed metalevel reasoning plans if they exist. JAM's conceptualization of goals and goal achievement is more classically defined (UMPRS is more behavioral performance-based than truly goal-based) and makes the distinction between plans to achieve goals and plans that simply encode behaviors. Goal-types implemented include achievement (attain a specified world state), maintenance (re-attain a specified world state), and performance. Execution of multiple simultaneous goals are supported, with suspension and resumption capabilities for each goal (i.e., intention) thread. JAM plans have explicit precondition and runtime attributes that restrict their applicability, a postcondition attribute, and a plan attributes section for specifying plan/domain-specific plan features. Available plan constructs include: sequencing, iteration, subgoaling, atomic (i.e., non-interruptable) plan segments, n-branch deterministic and non-deterministic conditional execution, parallel execution of multiple plan segments, goal-based or world state-based synchronization, an explicit failure-handling section, and Java primitive function definition through building it into JAM as well as the invocation of predefined (i.e., legacy) class members via Java's reflection capabilities without having to build it into JAM.

JASA

  - Web site: www.csc.liv.ac.uk/~sphelps/jasa
  - Alt Web site: sourceforge.net/projects/jasa/

  JASA is a high performance auction simulator suitable for conducting experiments in agent-based computational economics. It implements various auction mechanisms, trading strategies and experiments described in the computational economics literature, and as the software matures we hope that it will become a repository for reference implementations of commonly used mechanisms, strategies and learning algorithms.

Jason

  - Web site: jason.sourceforge.net

  A Java-based interpreter for an extended version of AgentSpeak. Unlike other BDI (Beliefs-Desires-Intentions) agent tools, Jason implements the operational semantics of AgentSpeak, a BDI logic programming language extensively discussed in the literature. It is available as Open Source under GNU LGPL.

JATLite

  - Web site: java.stanford.edu/

  JATLite is providing a set of java packages which makes easy to build multi-agent systems using Java. JATLite provides only light-weight, small set of packages so that the developers can handle all the packages with little efforts. For flexibility JATLite provides four different layers from abstract to Router implementation. A user can access any layer we are providing. Each layer has a different set of assumptions. The user can choose an appropriate layer according to the assumptions on the layer and user's application. The introduction page contains JATLite features and the set of assumptions for each layer.

JATLiteBeans

  - Web site: waitaki.otago.ac.nz/JATLiteBean/

  - Improved, easier-to-use interface to JATLite features including KQML message parsing, receiving, and sending.
  - Extensible architecture for message handling and agent "thread of control" management
  - Useful functions for parsing of simple KQML message content
  - JATLiteBean supports automatic advertising of agent capabilities to facilitator agents
  - Automatic, optional, handling of the "forward" performative
  - Generic configuration file parser
  - KQML syntax checker

Java(tm) Agent Template

  - Web site: www-cdr.stanford.edu/ABE/JavaAgent.html

  The JAT provides a fully functional template, written entirely in the Java language, for constructing software agents which communicate peer-to-peer with a community of other agents distributed over the Internet. Although portions of the code which define each agent are portable, JAT agents are not migratory but rather have a static existence on a single host. This behavior is in contrast to many other "agent" technologies. (However, using the Java RMI, JAT agents could dynamically migrate to a foreign host via an agent resident on that host). Currently, all agent messages use KQML as a top-level protocol or message wrapper. The JAT includes functionality for dynamically exchanging "Resources", which can include Java classes (e.g. new languages and interpreters, remote services, etc.), data files and information inlined into the KQML messages.

lyntin

  - Web site: lyntin.sourceforge.net/

  Lyntin is an extensible Mud client and framework for the creation of autonomous agents, or bots, as well as mudding in general. Lyntin is centered around Python, a dynamic, object-oriented, and fun programming language and based on TinTin++ a lovely mud client.

Mole

  - Web site: mole.informatik.uni-stuttgart.de/

  Mole is an agent system supporting mobile agents programmed in Java. Mole's agents consist of a cluster of objects, which have no references to the outside, and as a whole work on tasks given by the user or another agent. They have the ability to roam a network of "locations" autonomously. These "locations" are an abstraction of real, existing nodes in the underlying network. They can use location-specific resources by communicating with dedicated agents representing these services. Agents are able to use services provided by other agents and to provide services as well.

Narval

  - Web site: www.logilab.org

  Narval is the acronym of "Network Assistant Reasoning with a Validating Agent Language". It is a personal network assistant based on artificial intelligence and agent technologies. It executes recipes (sequences of actions) to perform tasks. It is easy to specify a new action using XML and to implement it using Python. Recipes can be built and debugged using a graphical interface.

NeL

  - Web site: www.nevrax.org

  NeL is actually a game development library (for massive multi-player games), but I'm including it here as it (will) include a fairly sizable AI library. Here's a blurb from the whitepaper:

  The purpose of the AI library is to provide a pragmatic approach to creating a distributed agents platform. Its focus is agents; individual entities that communicate regardless of location, using an action-reaction model.

OAA

  - Web site: www.ai.sri.com/~oaa/

  The Open Agent Architecture is a framework in which a community of software agents running on distributed machines can work together on tasks assigned by human or non-human participants in the community. Distributed cooperation and high-level communication are two ideas central to the foundation of the OAA.

  It defines an interagent communication language and supports multiple platforms and programming languages.

OpenSteer

  - Web site: opensteer.sourceforge.net

  OpenSteer is a C++ library to help build steering behaviors for autonomous characters in games and animation. OpenSteer provides an app which displays predefined demos of steering behaviors. You can prototype, visualize and debug your own as a plug-in.

OSCAR

  - Web site: oscarhome.soc-sci.arizona.edu/ftp/OSCAR-web-page/oscar.html

  The goal of the OSCAR project is the formulation of a general theory of rationality and its implementation in an artificial rational agent. The function of artificial agents is to draw conclusions and make decisions on the basis of information supplied to them. OSCAR is a fully implemented architecture for rational agents, based upon a general purpose defeasible reasoner. OSCAR is written in Common Lisp and is free for educational and research purposes.

Penguin!

  - FTP site: http://www.cpan.org/modules/by-category/23_Miscellaneous_Modules/Penguin/FSG/

  Penguin is a Perl 5 module. It provides you with a set of functions which allow you to:

  - send encrypted, digitally signed Perl code to a remote machine to be executed.
  - receive code and, depending on who signed it, execute it in an arbitrarily secure, limited compartment.
  The combination of these functions enable direct Perl coding of algorithms to handle safe internet commerce, mobile information-gathering agents, "live content" web browser helper apps, distributed load-balanced computation, remote software update, distance machine administration, content-based information propagation, Internet-wide shared-data applications, network application builders, and so on.

Ps-i

  - Web site: ps-i.sourceforge.net

  Ps-i is an environment for running agent-based simulations. It is cross-platform, with binaries available for Win32. Features include:

  - declarative language for model specification
  - industry standard Tcl/Tk scripting with built-in routine optimization, speculative evaluation and xf86 JIT compiler users can create complex models without sacrificing perfomance
  - user friendly interface
  - save and restore program runs
  - change model parameters on the fly
  - data visualization: field display with multiple agent shapes and color, statistics window, agent viewer, routine browser and highlight agents tool

Pyro

  - Web site: http://pyrorobotics.org/

  Pyro is a library, environment, graphical user interface, and low-level drivers to explore AI and robotics using the Python language. It works with many real robotics platforms and simulators. Extensive algorithms including behavior-based, vision (motion tracking, blobs, etc.), learning (back-propagation, self-organizing maps, etc.), evolutionary, and more.

Quackle

  - Web site: http://www.quackle.org/
  - Alt Web site: http://web.mit.edu/jasonkb/www/quackle/
  - Alt Web site: http://sourceforge.net/projects/quackle

  Quackle is a world-class crossword game artificial intelligence and analysis tool. It includes a move generator, simulator, and Qt-based user interface and can be used with any board layout, alphabet, lexicon, and tile distribution.

Remembrance Agents

  - Web site: www.remem.org

  Remembrance Agents are a set of applications that watch over a user's shoulder and suggest information relevant to the current situation. While query-based memory aids help with direct recall, remembrance agents are an augmented associative memory. For example, the word-processor version of the RA continuously updates a list of documents relevant to what's being typed or read in an emacs buffer. These suggested documents can be any text files that might be relevant to what you are currently writing or reading. They might be old emails related to the mail you are currently reading, or abstracts from papers and newspaper articles that discuss the topic of your writing.

SimAgent

  - Web site: www.cs.bham.ac.uk/research/projects/poplog/packages/simagent.html

  The SimAgent toolkit provides a range of resources for research and teaching related to the development of interacting agents in environments of various degrees and kinds of complexity. It can be run as a pure simulation tool, or installed in a robot with a sufficiently powerful on-board computer, e.g. running linux. It was originally developed to support exploratory research on human-like intelligent agents, but has also been used for student projects developing a variety of interactive games and simulations.

spyse

  - Web site: spyse.sf.net
  - Alt Web site: zope.org/Members/drapmeyer/spyse

  spyse is a development framework and platform for building multi-agent systems using the Python programming language. A multi-agent system (MAS) combines concepts from distributed computing and artificial intelligence. Agents are autonomously reasoning software entities that can collaborate (or compete) in order to achieve a (common) goal. By cooperating they create emergent behaviour in the system (distributed artificial intelligence). The architecture of a MAS is specified in the FIPA standard.

  Spyse provides multiple means for reasoning (BDI logics, CLIPS expert shell, etc.) and communicating locally and remotely.

  Each agent has its own thread of control. Agents within and among instances of the platform communicate by exchanging messages based on ontologies. Spyse makes use of the Web Ontology Language (OWL) defined for the Semantic Web.

TKQML

  - Web site: www.csee.umbc.edu/tkqml/

  TKQML is a KQML application/addition to Tcl/Tk, which allows Tcl based systems to communicate easily with a powerful agent communication language.

The Tocoma Project

  - Web site: www.tacoma.cs.uit.no/

  An agent is a process that may migrate through a computer network in order to satisfy requests made by clients. Agents are an attractive way to describe network-wide computations.

  The TACOMA project focuses on operating system support for agents and how agents can be used to solve problems traditionally addressed by operating systems. We have implemented a series of prototype systems to support agents.

  TACOMA Version 1.2 is based on UNIX and TCP. The system supports agents written in C, Tcl/Tk, Perl, Python, and Scheme (Elk). It is implemented in C. This TACOMA version has been in public domain since April 1996.

  We are currently focusing on heterogeneity, fault-tolerance, security and management issues. Also, several TACOMA applications are under construction. We implemented StormCast 4.0, a wide-area network weather monitoring system accessible over the internet, using TACOMA and Java. We are now in the process of evaluating this application, and plan to build a new StormCast version to be completed by June 1997.

UMPRS Agent

  - Web site: http://www.marcush.net/IRS/

  UMPRS supports top-down, goal-based reasoning and selects goals and plans based on maximal priority. Execution of multiple simultaneous goals are supported, with suspension and resumption capabilities for each goal (i.e., intention) thread. UMPRS plans have an integrated precondition/runtime attribute that constrain their applicability. Available plan constructs include: sequencing, iteration, subgoaling, atomic (i.e., non-interruptable) blocks, n-branch deterministic conditional execution, explicit failure-handling section, and C++ primitive function definition.

Virtual Secretary Project (ViSe)

  (Tcl/Tk)

  - Web site: www.vise.cs.uit.no/vise/

  The motivation of the Virtual Secretary project is to construct user-model-based intelligent software agents, which could in most cases replace human for secretarial tasks, based on modern mobile computing and computer network. The project includes two different phases: the first phase (ViSe1) focuses on information filtering and process migration, its goal is to create a secure environment for software agents using the concept of user models; the second phase (ViSe2) concentrates on agents' intelligent and efficient cooperation in a distributed environment, its goal is to construct cooperative agents for achieving high intelligence. (Implemented in Tcl/TclX/Tix/Tk)

WebMate

  - Web site: http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~softagents/webmate/

  WebMate is a personal agent for World-Wide Web browsing and searching. It accompanies you when you travel on the internet and provides you what you want.

  Features include:

  - Searching enhancement, including parallel search, searching keywords refinement using our relevant keywords extraction technology, relevant feedback, etc.
  - Browsing assistant, including learning your current interesting, recommending you new URLs according to your profile and selected resources, monitoring bookmarks of Netscape or IE, sending the current browsing page to your friends, etc.
  - Offline browsing, including downloading the following pages from the current page for offline browsing.
  - Filtering HTTP header, including recording http header and all the transactions between your browser and WWW servers, etc.
  - Checking the HTML page to find the errors or dead links, etc.
  - Programming in Java, independent of operating system, runing in multi-thread.

Zeus

  - Web site: more.btexact.com/projects/agents/zeus/

  The construction of multi-agent systems involves long development times and requires solutions to some considerable technical difficulties. This has motivated the development of the ZEUS toolkit, which provides a library of software components and tools that facilitate the rapid design, development and deployment of agent system

## 6.2 Robotics and Simulators

From fun battling robot games to full robot control systems. The idea is physical agents in the real world, or at least their control programming.

BattleBots

  - Web site: www.bluefire.nu/battlebots/

  AI programming game where you design the bot by selecting hardware and programming its CPU, then competing with other bots. Competitions can have teams and special rules for a game.

  The hardware for use in your bot includes weapons, engine, scanners, CPU, etc. The programming lauguage is dependent on the CPU type and is similar to an assembly language.

Cadaver

  - Web site: www.erikyyy.de/cadaver/

  Cadaver is a simulated world of cyborgs and nature in realtime. The battlefield consists of forests, grain, water, grass, carcass (of course) and lots of other things. The game server manages the game and the rules. You start a server and connect some clients. The clients communicate with the server using a very primitive protocol. They can order cyborgs to harvest grain, attack enemies or cut forest. The game is not intended to be played by humans! There is too much to control. Only for die-hards: Just telnet to the server and you can enter commands by hand. Instead the idea is that you write artificial intelligence clients to beat the other artificial intelligences. You can choose a language (and operating system) of your choice to do that task. It is enough to write a program that communicates on standard input and standard output channels. Then you can use programs like "socket" to connect your clients to the server. It is NOT needed to write TCP/IP code, although i did so :) The battle shall not be boring, and so there is the so called spyboss client that displays the action graphically on screen.

CLARAty

  - Web site: http://claraty.jpl.nasa.gov/man/overview/

  CLARAty is an integrated framework for reusable robotic software. It defines interfaces for common robotic functionality and integrates multiple implementations of any given functionality. Examples of such capabilities include pose estimation, navigation, locomotion and planning. In addition to supporting multiple algorithms, it provides adaptations to multiple robotic platforms.

  This is a public release of the some of the code used in the Mars rover projects at NASA. It is under a free for non-commercial use licence and consists of large number of modules and algorithms along with extensive documentation.

GNU Robots

  - Web site: http://www.gnu.org/software/robots/

  GNU Robots is a game/diversion where you construct a program for a little robot, then watch him explore a world. The world is filled with baddies that can hurt you, objects that you can bump into, and food that you can eat. The goal of the game is to collect as many prizes as possible before are killed by a baddie or you run out of energy. Robots can be written in Guile scheme or using a GUI.

Infon Battle Arena

  - Web site: http://infon.dividuum.de/trac/wiki

  Infon Battle Arena is a networked multiplayer real-time programming game featuring little creatures fighting for food. You upload your Creature Code (written in Lua) to a game server using a telnet Interface. The game server then runs your code. The graphical client can be used to watch running games or replay recorded games.

Khepera Simulator

  - Web site: diwww.epfl.ch/lami/team/michel/khep-sim/

  Khepera Simulator is a public domain software package written by Olivier MICHEL during the preparation of his Ph.D. thesis, at the Laboratoire I3S, URA 1376 of CNRS and University of Nice-Sophia Antipolis, France. It allows to write your own controller for the mobile robot Khepera using C or C++ languages, to test them in a simulated environment and features a nice colorful X11 graphical interface. Moreover, if you own a Khepera robot, it can drive the real robot using the same control algorithm. It is mainly oriented toward to researchers studying autonomous agents.

Nero

  - Web site: http://www.nerogame.org/

  Neuro-Evolving Robotic Operatives, or NERO for short, is a unique computer game that lets you play with adapting intelligent agents hands-on. Evolve your own robot army by tuning their artificial brains for challenging tasks, then pit them against your friends' teams in online competitions!

  The goals of the project are (1) to demonstrate the power of state-of-the-art machine learning technology, (2) to create an engaging game based on it, and (3) to provide a robust and challenging development and benchmarking domain for AI researchers.

  Closed source but free to download. They are working on OpenNERO which will be open source and more intended as a research platform.

Player

  - Web site: http://playerstage.sourceforge.net/
  - Player wiki: http://playerstage.sourceforge.net/wiki/Player

  Player is a device server that provides a powerful, flexible interface to a variety of sensors and actuators (e.g., robots). Because Player uses a TCP socket-based client/server model, robot control programs can be written in any programming language and can execute on any computer with network connectivity to the robot. In addition, Player supports multiple concurrent client connections to devices, creating new possibilities for distributed and collaborative sensing and control.

RealTimeBattle

  - Web site: http://realtimebattle.sourceforge.net/

  RealTimeBattle is a programming game, in which robots controlled by programs are fighting each other. The goal is to destroy the enemies, using the radar to examine the environment and the cannon to shoot.

  - Game progresses in real time, with the robot programs running as child processes to RealTimeBattle.
  - The robots communicate with the main program using the standard input and output.
  - Robots can be constructed in almost any programming language.
  - Maximum number of robots can compete simultaneously.
  - A simple messaging language is used for communication, which makes it easy to start constructing robots.
  - Robots behave like real physical object.
  - You can create your own arenas.
  - Highly configurable.

Robocode

  - Web site: robocode.sourceforge.net

  A java based robot combat programming game. It provides a simple API and class framework. It is designed as a means of learning Java and is easy to start using while not constraining the programmer from more advanced techniques. It has a built in security manager for running other peoples robots in a safe way.

Robodeb

  - Web site: http://www.transterpreter.org/robodeb/

  Robodeb is a complete robotics simulation environment for teaching concurrency and parallelism. It provides a unique environment for exploring concurrency and robotics. It provides a complete IDE for the occam-pi programming language, and leverages the Transterpreter, our portable and flexible runtime for the language. This combination is critical, as it provides a principled interface to the Player/Stage API, a set of widely used libraries for controlling the Pioneer3 robotics platform.

RobotFlow

  - Web site: http://robotflow.sourceforge.net/

  RobotFlow is a mobile robotics tookit based on the FlowDesigner project. FlowDesigner is a data-flow oriented architecture, similar to Simulink (Matlab) or Labview that is free (LGPL) and versatile. The visual programming interface provided in the FlowDesigner project will help people to better visualize & understand what is really happening in the robot's control loops, sensors, actuators, by using graphical probes and debugging in real-time.

RoboTournament

  - Web site: http://robotournament.sourceforge.net/

  RoboTournament is a RoboRally inspired game where players program their robots to vanquish their opponents. RoboTournament features: Multiple Game Types: Death Match, Rally, and Capture The Flag. Multi-Player through TCP/IP, Six weapons including BFG, Map Editor, and a wide variety of board elements.

Simbad

  - Web site: http://simbad.sourceforge.net/

  Simbad is a Java 3d robot simulator for scientific and educationnal purposes. It is mainly dedicated to researchers/programmers who want a simple basis for studying Situated Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning, and more generally AI algorithms, in the context of Autonomous Robotics and Autonomous Agents. It is not intented to provide a real world simulation and is kept voluntarily readable and simple.

  Simbad enables programmers to write their own robot controller, modify the environment and use the available sensors. Don't think of it as a finite product but merely as an opened framework to test your own ideas.

SimRobot

  - Web site: www.informatik.uni-bremen.de/~simrobot/
  - FTP site: ftp.uni-bremen.de/pub/ZKW/INFORM/simrobot/

  SimRobot is a program for simulation of sensor based robots in a 3D environment. It is written in C++, runs under UNIX and X11 and needs the graphics toolkit XView.

  - Simulation of robot kinematics
  - Hierarchically built scene definition via a simple definition language
  - Various sensors built in: camera, facette eye, distance measurement, light sensor, etc.
  - Objects defined as polyeders
  - Emitter abstractly defined; can be interpreted e.g. as light or sound
  - Camera images computed according to the raytracing or Z-buffer algorithms known from computer graphics
  - Specific sensor/motor software interface for communicating with the simulation
  - Texture mapping onto the object surfaces: bitmaps in various formats
  - Comprehensive visualization of the scene: wire frame w/o hidden lines, sensor and actor values
  - Interactive as well as batch driven control of the agents and operation in the environment
  - Collision detection
  - Extendability with user defined object types
  - Possible socket communication to e.g. the Khoros image processing software

TclRobots

  - Web site: www.nyx.net/~tpoindex/

  TclRobots is a programming game, similar to 'Core War'. To play TclRobots, you must write a Tcl program that controls a robot. The robot's mission is to survive a battle with other robots. Two, three, or four robots compete during a battle, each running different programs (or possibly the same program in different robots.) Each robot is equipped with a scanner, cannon, drive mechanism. A single match continues until one robot is left running. Robots may compete individually, or combine in a team oriented battle. A tournament can be run with any number of robot programs, each robot playing every other in a round-robin fashion, one-on-one. A battle simulator is available to help debug robot programs.

  The TclRobots program provides a physical environment, imposing certain game parameters to which all robots must adhere. TclRobots also provides a view on a battle, and a controlling user interface. TclRobots requirements: a wish interpreter built from Tcl 7.4 and Tk 4.0.

URBI

  - Web site: http://www.urbiforge.com/

  URBI is a Universal Real-time Behavior Interface and gives you a simple but powerful way to control any robot or complex system like a video game, using a convenient and easy to use scripting language that can be interfaced with several popular programming languages (C++, Java, Matlab,...) and OS (Windows, Mac OSX, Linux). URBI is based on a client/server architecture, which give a great deal of flexibility. URBI includes powerful features compared to existing scripting solutions: parallel execution of commands, event programming, command tagging, dynamic variables,... Currently, URBI is used as well by academic research labs, the industry and by hobbyists.

VWORLD

  - Web site: zhar.net/projects/vworld/

  Vworld is a simulated environment for research with autonomous agents written in prolog. It is currently in something of an beta stage. It works well with SWI-prolog, but should work with Quitnus-prolog with only a few changes. It is being designed to serve as an educational tool for class projects dealing with prolog and autonomous agents. It comes with three demo worlds or environments, along with sample agents for them. There are two versions now. One written for SWI-prolog and one written for LPA-prolog. Documentation is roughly done (with a student/professor framework in mind).

Yampa

  - Web site: http://www.haskell.org/yampa/

  FRP system with robotics library and graphical interactive robotics simulator.

  Functional reactive programming, or FRP, is a paradigm for programming hybrid systems i.e., systems containing a combination of both continuous and discrete components in a high-level, declarative way. The key ideas in FRP are its notions of continuous, time-varying values, and time-ordered sequences of discrete events. Yampa is an instantiation of FRP as a domain-specific language embedded in Haskell.

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