| Stottler Henke developed Simbionic®,
a software product that lets tactical and operations experts specify
powerful behaviors for simulated forces graphically, without programming.
The SimBionic behavior authoring tool enables an instructor or tactical expert
to create entity behavior using a graphical "drag and drop" interface to
quickly build up complex behavior. Once behaviors have been created,
they can be easily modified and re-used for other scenarios.
SimBionic behaviors are implemented as finite state machines comprised of states and transitions.
SimBionic extends the usual notion of finite state machines by making it possible for
states to refer to other finite state machines hierarchically, to define modular behaviors that can be combined powerfully.
SimBionic software also provides four extensions that increase the power and expressiveness of the basic engine:
global and local variables, interrupt transitions, “blackboards” for sharing knowledge among finite state machines,
and polymorphic indexing for run-time selection of behaviors.
The Runtime Engine provides a C++ application programming interface,
so software developers can easily interface it with diverse simulators.
The SimBionic engine is highly scalable: each finite state machine runs efficiently
and occupies a small memory footprint, so SimBionic can run many finite state machines to control the entities in the system.
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