High-Fidelity Simulation of Aggregate Computing Systems with Collektivity

The verification and validation of collective adaptive systems is a challenging task, typically tackled through a combination of approaches including formal analysis, simulation, Hardware-in-the-Loop, and real-world experimentation. One critical aspect of simulation concerns the trade-off between realism and scalability. A typical validation pipeline involves initial simulation of large-scale scenarios with simplified models of the world, and detail is gradually increased in subsequent steps, introducing more realistic physical and environmental dynamics. An underexplored opportunity in this context lies in leveraging game development platforms to achieve high-fidelity simulations. In this work, we explore the integration of an existing implementation of aggregate programming, a common paradigm for engineering collective adaptive systems, with Unity, a widely used game development platform. We show that this integration is feasible even though the two systems were not designed to work together, we discuss the technical challenges that were encountered and the limitations of the approach, while highlighting the potential for such integration to enhance simulation realism in the study of collective adaptive systems.