Author(s)

R.L. Wood & J.E. Arnold

Abstract

AN AUTOMATA BASED SIMULATION OF CO-OPERATIVE DECISION MAKING R L Wood & J E Arnold Department of Manufacturing Engineering Loughborough University, Loughborough, Leicestershire, LE11 3TU, UK Email: R.L.Wood@lboro.ac.uk, J.E.Arnold@lboro.ac.uk ABSTRACT This paper presents the background and some initial results in the simulation of co-operative decision making amongst car drivers. The approach adopted is to use an Artificial Life technique, explicitly modelling drivers as automata. Whilst all drivers in the simulation use the same fixed set of rules to change state, each driver is given unique characteristics through assignment of preferred driving parameters and different importance values for different state transition rules. It is argued that this modelling approach demonstrates the presence of emergent behaviour within complex systems of interacting drivers. INTRODUCTION The work discussed here has three motivations: (i) to test the possibility of simulating human co-operative decision m

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