Labss

Born in the 90s, the Laboratory on Agent Based Social Simulation hosts ever since a highly interdisciplinary research group working at the intersection among cognitive, social and computational sciences, within the ISTC (Institute of Cognitive Sciences and Technologies) at the Italian National Research Council.

People collaborating within the LABSS have developed several multi agent based computational models and simulation platforms, and applied them to study the mechanisms and complex micro-macro dynamics of social and cognitive artifacts (such as norms and reputation) for the regulation of societies of autonomous intelligent agents.
The LABSS has been characterized in its early days by an explorative approach to Agent Based Modeling and Simulation. Ever since then, people working at the LABSS developed several multi agent based computational models and simulation platforms and applied them to

• Study the main ingredients of social intelligence as a properties of individual and multi-agent systems
• Study the complex (micro-macro) dynamics of social cognitive artefacts (f.i., norms and reputation) regulating societies of autonomous intelligent agents
• Model the emergence of social relationships and networks (for example, dependence networks) from societies of autonomous social intelligent agents (DEP-NET; PART-NET; etc.)
• Model norms as social behaviour and mental objects (consisting of normative representations and goals)
• Simulate norm-based agent societies (SIM-NORM)
• Develop a simulation-based theory of social evaluations, namely reputation and image,
• Apply it to develop a computational tool for forming and circulating social evaluation (REPAGE)

In the last few years, cross-methodological research, comparing natural and artificial data, has become a priority. Since the evolutionary study of altruism and reciprocity was undertaken at the LABSS, and the previous study of reputation was applied to a theory-driven design of reputation technology, our simulations started to be increasingly anchored to real-world data, from vampires’ food-sharing to human exchanges and electronic communities.

• Reproduce examples of altruism found in nature, i.e. food-sharing among vampire bats (Desmodus Rotundus), in order to model the evolution of altruism
• FantasyMarket
• MemoryCards
• Online Reputation

Born in the 90s, the Laboratory on Agent Based Social Simulation hosts ever since a highly interdisciplinary research group working at the intersection among cognitive, social and computational sciences, within the ISTC (Institute of Cognitive Sciences and Technologies) at the Italian National Research Council.