The TRAINS-90 Simulator

The goal of the TRAINS project is to design a computerized intermediary between a user and a set of agents capable of executing action in a transportation/production domain. The TRAINS-90 simulator simulates both the domain and the agents. It allows graphical editing of the world, and communication with the agents, either directly via the console or indirectly via remote procedure calls. The simulation has been designed to be easy to extend either by adding more intelligence to the agents, or by adding more actions the agents can invoke. This document describes the TRAINS-90 simulator at five levels of detail. At the first level, it describes the operation of the simulator while running the example developed over the summer of 1990. At the second level, it shows how to make modifications to the scenario used in that example. A more thorough description of the simulator at the user level is then provided. A programmer's view of the simulator follows for those who need to make modifications to the program itself. Finally, a sketch of the process of making changes to the simulator is provided