Introduction to MAFIS
What MAFIS is, why lifelong fault resilience matters, and how to get started.
MAFIS (Multi-Agent Fault Injection Simulator) is a fault resilience observatory for lifelong multi-agent path finding (MAPF). It measures how multi-agent systems degrade, recover, and adapt under faults, congestion, and cascading failures sustained over continuous operation.
MAFIS is a research project built in Rust using the Bevy engine, compiled to both WebAssembly (browser) and native desktop. It runs deterministic simulations where every fault event, cascade, and recovery is reproducible from a seed.
The Research Question
What happens to a multi-agent fleet under sustained fault injection?
Different solvers, fault types, and topologies produce different degradation and recovery patterns. MAFIS makes those differences observable and measurable.
Research Variables
| Variable | Options |
|---|---|
| Solver | PIBT, RHCR (PBS, PIBT-Window, Priority A*), Token Passing, TPTS, RT-LaCAM |
| Fault type | Burst, Wear-based (Weibull), Zone outage, Intermittent, Permanent zone outage |
| Grid topology | Warehouse Medium, Warehouse Large, Compact Grid, Kiva Warehouse, Sorting Center, Fulfillment Center |
| Agent density | Configurable (up to 500 agents) |
| Scheduler strategy | Random, Closest, Balanced, Roundtrip |
MAFIS is built to study how solver architecture, fault type, and topology interact under sustained fault conditions.
Resilience Scorecard
Every fault injection run produces a four-metric Resilience Scorecard:
- Fault Tolerance — throughput retained under faults
- NRR — operational uptime ratio, recovery speed vs fault frequency
- Fleet Utilization — fraction of the fleet still productive after faults
- Critical Time — fraction of time spent in a critically degraded state
See Resilience Scorecard for formulas and examples.
Two Versions
| Web (WASM) | Desktop (Native) | |
|---|---|---|
| Install | None (runs in browser) | Download binary |
| Performance | 500 agents, 60 FPS | 1000+ agents, parallel computation |
| Interface | HTML/CSS/JS controls | Full Egui panel system |
| Use case | Quick experiments, demos | Batch experiments, parameter sweeps |
Both versions share the same simulation core. Same seed = identical results.
A CLI tool (mafis) is also available for headless batch experiments and scripted parameter sweeps without any graphical interface.
What MAFIS Is NOT
[!WARNING] Not a solver benchmark. MAFIS does not compare algorithms against each other. Algorithm comparisons are MAPF Tracker’s domain.
[!WARNING] Not a static testbed. For standardized 2D grid environments, see MovingAI MAPF Benchmarks.
[!WARNING] Not a one-shot simulator. MAFIS measures degradation under continuous operation, not time-to-completion for a fixed set of goals.