In addition to the topics above, invited sessions will focus on:

Simulation-Driven Design (Jerzy Rozenblit)

This session will focus on effective uses of simulation-based techniques to drive design of heterogeneous systems. Techniques that focus on modeling technique to prototype designs virtually, and interactively refine the solution through simulation will be addressed. Knowledge techniques that support design automation at systems level will be presented as well.

Human Behavior and Performance Simulation (Levent Yilmaz, Tuncer Ören)

In recent years we have been observing significant advancements in virtual reality and synthetic world simulations for immersive industrial training, distributed war gaming and mission rehearsals, as well as animations for cartoons and movies. A significant challenge in such applications involves improving the behavior realism of synthetic agents at least along the motivational, cognitive, normative, and affective dimensions. This is an important objective that may affect business productivity, mission effectiveness, and safety and health of individuals who transfer skills from synthetic worlds to real world. By including greater degrees of personality and human modes of interactivity, greater levels of cognitive subtlety and behavioral sensitivity in synthetic agent behavior can be achieved to enable higher levels of skill attainment. To this end, the purpose of this session is to facilitate dissemination of the most recent advancements in human behavior modeling and simulation within various application areas including business, military simulations, and human and social dynamics.

Modeling and Simulation of Goods and Services in Production Systems (Fouzia Ounnar, Pierre Ladet)

Under the pressure of globalisation, competition, contraction of cycle times and increase in complexity, production companies seek new forms of organization. The traditional vision which considers that the control of the company must be necessarily accompanied by a maximum integration of internal activities gave the place to another vision that encourages the company to put its activities in competition with concurrent external activities and not to hesitate to externalise those which prove non competitive. Consequently, changes appear in the internal and external relations of the company. The development of the industrial activity and the reduction of the relations among companies reveal a new approach qualified "industrial partnership" of the relations among companies, which are constituted as a network. Indeed, since a few years, a strong evolution of these relations appeared in order to obtain a better internal management of each partner and a better total performance. To obtain and validate this performance, main motivation of each company, modeling and simulation of production systems constitute an essential approach. The company, within its network of industrial partners, is seen as a discrete events system. Formal modelling and simulation (using formalisms such as the DEVS, Petri nets, Timed-automata, ...) are needed for comprehension, control and improvement of the internal and external operations of the company. The objective of this session is to present the current advances in formal modeling and simulation of goods and services production systems for the improvement of local and total performance.

Process Systems Engineering (PSE)/Computer Aided Process Engineering (CAPE) (Jean Marc Le Lann)

The focus of the these sessions will be put on concepts, methodologies, methods and algorithms, techniques and tools developed and used to help the decision making processing in the optimization of the design, simulation and/or operation of industrial processes. The field of applications will take into account a broad area as Chemistry and Chemical products, Chemical Engineering, Agro and Bioprocess Engineering, Material processes, Process Engineering (Micro and Nano systems), Water treatment systems, Product and Process simulation, Process Integration and Intensification, Process Dynamics and Process Operation (Discrete & Hybrid systems), Process Analysis, Manufacturing and Process operations, Continuous & Batch systems. New conceptual tools coming from AI, Object-Oriented approach and new challenges in progress coming from computational Science and technologies (standardization, interoperability) will be enlightened.

 Virtual Reality and Simulation (Jean Sequeira, Jean-Louis Vercher)

Virtual Reality (VR) technology is a rapidly evolving and diversifying field. The massive research and development process has reached a degree which makes it now both a powerful and affordable tool for interactive visualization of massive data and/or simulated systems: from a simple computer display to a large immersive facility, a wide spectrum of technologies offers the possibility to adapt to each specific need. More specifically, VR offers the powerfulness of immersion and interaction, which combination challenges our capability to understand real and/or simulated data. The challenge is not only a technological one, but it is also a human one, since the human is to be considered as a full component of the system (“the man is within the loop”). Understanding what is immersion and how the human interacts with the simulated model may be as efficient as improving hardware/software aspects in our attempts to better take advantage of our models. For instance, behavioral and interactive realism are at least as relevant factors as rendered graphic realism. Providing a simulated human (avatar or humanoid) with a full personality is now at reach, thanks to the interaction between Cognitive and Computer Sciences. This session gives us the opportunity to make actors and users of VR meet and focus on problems related to Man and Simulation, and reciprocally to examine in which way a wide set of applicative fields should fully take advantage of VR. These applicative fields are (but not limited to) Medicine, Chemistry, Physics, Psychology, Sports Sciences, Transportations, Training, Manufacturing industries, etc…

Robot Behavior Modeling and Simulation (Claude Touzet, Francesco Mondada)

In recent years we have been observing significant advancements in Robotics, in particular in the context of control, programming, learning, autonomy, and cooperation. Today’s challenge involves improving the behavior realism of robots, at least along the motivational, cognitive, normative, and affective dimensions (i.e., personality). This is an important objective that should affect mission effectiveness, business productivity, and safety and health of the robots - as also of the individuals who interacts with robots in the real world. By including greater degrees of personality and greater robot/human interactivity, greater levels of cognitive subtlety and behavioral sensitivity in robot behavior can be achieved that should enable higher levels of competence. To this end, the purpose of this session is to facilitate dissemination of the most recent advancements in robot behavior modeling and simulation within various application areas including environment restoration, ethology, military operations, space exploration, submarine mapping, human guidance and robot cooperation with robots or humans.

Extended versions of session best papers will be published in the "International Journal of Advanced Robotic Systems"

Agent Based Modeling and Simulation in Industry and Environment (Bernard Espinasse, Jean-Pierre Muller)

Research in the domain of multi-agent systems (MAS) is becoming more and more important because of the capacity of MAS to design and simulate complex systems, i.e. systems composed of many entities in interaction between themselves and with an external environment. MAS are used in many domains in which classical mathematical models are not available because either the dynamics are far from equilibrium, or the systems are open (creation and deletion of entities in the course of simulation), or emergent phenomena have to be explored, or the entities are heterogeneous (for example, the eco-socio-systems which combine ecological and social dynamics), or simply because they provide a more intuitive understanding. These sessions are intended to offer a forum for people interested in agent-based modeling and simulation to discuss methodologies, techniques in two main application fields: Industry and Environment.

International Program Committee