The Hats Simulator

The Hats Simulator is designed to be a lightweight proxy for many intelligence analysis problems, and thus a test environment for analysts´ tools. It is a virtual world in which many agents engage in individual and collective activities. Most agents are benign, some intend harm. Agent activities are planned by a generative planner. Playing against the simulator, the job of the analyst is to find harmful agents before they carry out their plans. The simulator maintains information about all agents. However, information is hidden from the analyst and some is expensive. After each game, the analyst is assessed a set of scores including the cost of acquiring information about agents, the cost of falsely accusing benign agents, and the cost of failing to detect harmful agents. The simulator is implemented and currently manages the activities of up to one hundred thousand agents.