SDM'Studio - Sequential Decision Making Studio
Introduction
SDM'Studio is an open-source software platform dedicated to artificial intelligence research. The platform focuses on solving so-called sequential decision making problems. That is, problems in which one or more agents have the objective of accomplishing a predefined task by interacting in an environment. SDMS is based on the theoretical foundations of Markov decision processes (MDP). Through carefully chosen reformulations, we extend the classical Bellman equations, and the algorithms derived from them, to more complex classes of problems such as POMDPs, DecPOMDPs and POSGs (see Theoretical Foundations).
For whom ?
SDM'Studio is both a software and a library. This characteristic allows different types of use according to the needs and knowledge of the user. A user with no particular knowledge in programming can use the high-level interface of the software to solve a problem that was formulated beforehand according to the predefined formatting (see Formulating a problem). In the case of a person with a computer science background, she can use the C++ library part to integrate it into their application or to experiment it with new approaches to solving problems.
Getting started
The easiest way to get started is to try it out. Start by installing SDM'Studio on your Linux or MacOS computer using the Installation guide. Then follow the tutorial 'Getting started' and do your first command line troubleshooting. You can continue by reading the sections on Theoretical Foundations and Algorithmic Foundations to get an overview of the existing software building blocks in SDMS. Finally, the Contribute and Documentation sections of the library will allow you to get to grips with the tool as a developer.
Philosophy
SDMS is developed with the aim of contributing to current and future scientific research. To this end, the software is made available free of charge and the code is open-source. This is to allow the AI research community to benefit from it quickly and easily. It can be used for commercial purposes, provided that it respects the terms of the licence defined by the authors.
The objective of the SDMS project, mainly funded by the French National Research Agency (opens new window), is to build a software:
- free of charge
- efficient
- bringing together the latest scientific advances in the field
- reusable for future research
- easy to use