Qualia is a free (FLOSS) software library for agent-based systems written in simple C++. It is meant to run on embedded devices as well as on general purpose computers, with a specific focus on AVR microcontrollers such as the ones used on Arduino. It makes it easy for designers, artists and researchers to experiment with different sorts of agents (reinforcement learning, finite state machines, cellular automata, etc) and environments (simulation, physical/embedded, network-based, etc).

Key concepts

An Agent is a device/being/thing that takes actions in response to observations. In Qualia, agents will typically be platform-agnostic.

An Environment is a component that gives back observations in response to actions. In Qualia, environments typically implement the platform-specific behaviors of actually "doing" the action (eg. by asking a microcontroller to send a signal to one of its pins) and "reading" the observation (eg. by getting them from a sensor).

A Qualia is simply the combination of an agent and an environment, managing the interaction between them both and thus creating the behavioral loop.