Suitability of Game Engine technologies for the implementation of a Spatial Tuple based middleware

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Francesco Dente  •  Shapour Nemati  •  Samuele Burattini
abstract

Distributed multi-agent-systems greatly benefit from the advantages of the Linda model, however, the latest developments of mobile Augmented Reality applications require an approach that takes space into account as a first- class citizen. More specifically, the lack of a direct and natural support for space-aware and space-based coordination in tuple spaces brought the birth of the theoretical model Spatial Tuples, an extension of the basic Linda model where tuples are conceptually placed in regions of the physical world and the behaviour of primitives depends on the spatial properties of the coordinating agents, tuples and the topology of space.
However a fulfilling implementation of Spatial Tuples had not been devel- oped yet, so the goal of this project was exploring the feasibility and suit- ability of Game Engines as a tool for implementing the spatial abstraction, thanks to their innate capabilities of modeling virtual geometric spaces. The Game Engine of choice is Unity due to its wide use in the academic field. This report presents the development of a prototype middleware based on Spatial Tuples, along with a case study to showcase the capabilities of the solution.

outcomes