CALL FOR PROPOSALS

Heterogeneous Rule-Based Adaptive Multiagent Simulator Effort 
(HERBAMS)

Objective:

To contract with various teams to cooperate in the development
and construction of a simulator with the following parts:

	1	Virtual World Mechanics
	2	Agent Logic/Scripting Language for Rule and Case Based Reasoning
	3	Offline Agent Adaptation
	4	Online Agent Reconfiguration/Negotiation/Reallocation
	5	Event Logging and Analysis for Performance Measurement
	6	GUI/Views and Remote Asynchronous Access
	7	Knowledge Elicitation and Agent Preprogramming
	8	Application Presentation-Layer Transformation
	9	Code Quality Management and Integration
	10	Testing, Documentation, and Reporting

Teams may bid and be awarded any number of parts and in any 
combination.  Expect $50-100k for each part depending on complexity.

Pre-Proposals should be 5p white papers describing technical approaches,
vision, timeline, resources, and work to be done.  Scenarios describing
target ranges of behaviors are welcome. 

Follow-up proposals by invitation only.

Technical Description

We proposae a simulator for investigating the joint collaborative action of
a number of agents, each with different roles.  Define a role as
a set of responsibilities and a responsibility as a set of rules.
The language in which the rules are expressed must be designed as part
of this proposal, and depends on the virtual world.  The simulator should
support the explicit allocation of roles as well as genetic programming
or similar offline methods for the reconfiguration of roles.  The
simulator should support online message passing and negotiation in 
support of real-time task reallocation.  Agents should have well-defined
capabilities, both in terms of physical action, cognition, and perception.

The simulator is nominally for the simulation of a kickoff return team
facing a kickoff team in U.S. football, with the following caveats:

	teams may have pre-set plays that are highly conditional on events,

	players can communicate directly with teammates or can broadcast
	information at high rates of speed with little or no ambiguity,

	players have different sensory abilities, both inherently, and as
	a result of their geographic location, or the contingencies of the
	play,

	return plays have high task complexity that permit changes of
	role, for example, the ability to pitch the ball from one player
	to another, or to perform a reverse,

	players have a variety of strategies for blocking or avoiding
	blocks, which, in various combinations, permit varying degrees and
	kinds of success.

The simulator's output and internal constants should be adaptable, so
that a play can be made to look like the coordination of unmanned
airborne vehicles, unmanned naval vessels, or unmanned ground combat
units.