Abstract
AKIRA is an open source framework designed for parallel, asynchronous and distributed computation, on the basis of some general architectural principles which are inspired by modular organization in biological systems. We introduce the motivation behind its design, the components of the framework and some examples of use: 1) a case study in a simple number domain, in which its capabilities such as context sensitiveness are highlighted; 2) an architecture for visual search tasks, in which a goal oriented behavior emerges from the cooperation and competition of many feature-specific modules, organized hierarchically; 3) a schema-based agent architecture, inspired by an ethological model of the praying mantis, including drives, schemas, routines and realizing visual and motor behavior in a realistic simulated environment.