From psychological and real-time interaction requirements to behavioural simulation

Behavioural models offer the ability to simulate autonomous entities like organisms and living beings. Psychological studies have showed that the human behaviour can be described by a perception-decision-action loop, in which the decisional process is somehow real-time, concurrent, and hierarchical. Building such systems for interactive simulation requires the design of a reactive system treating flows of data to and from the environment, in a complex way requiring modularity, concurrency and hierarchy, and involving task control and preemption. Accordingly, in this paper we address the adequateness to the decisional part of the behavioural model of Hierarchical Parallel Transition Systems (HPTS). An application consisting in the simulation of a transportation system shows how these HPTS can be of use.