The Environment Interface Standard (EIS) is a Java-based interface standard for connecting agents to controllable entities in an environment such as a game. The interface provides support for managing the connection (e.g., for pausing and terminating an environment) and for interaction between agents and entities that are available in an environment (e.g., bots in a game). An agent that is connected to a controllable entity receives percepts from and can send actions to that entity. Percepts inform the agent about the state of the entity and its environment. Actions tell the entity which actions to perform in its environment. Several example implementations of environments are available @github.com/eishub. A default implementation of the EIS interface is also provided.
We think that the understandability (and also usability) of the interface
could be improved by relating the functionality to the different views of
interrelated EIS parts.
We propose like to clearly differentiate between these different
views (who is allowed to do what with whom?). This also includes
that we would really strongly advocate to propose a set of interfaces
for EIS (for each two components). (This would be similar to the
standards of the workflow management coalition for a workflow management
systems and would help to understand the core responsibilities of each
part).
We think that the understandability (and also usability) of the interface could be improved by relating the functionality to the different views of interrelated EIS parts. We propose like to clearly differentiate between these different views (who is allowed to do what with whom?). This also includes that we would really strongly advocate to propose a set of interfaces for EIS (for each two components). (This would be similar to the standards of the workflow management coalition for a workflow management systems and would help to understand the core responsibilities of each part).