A New Paradigm for SpeckNets: Inspiration from Fungal Colonies

Abstract

In this position paper, we propose the development of a new biologically inspired paradigm based on fungal colonies, for the application to pervasive adaptive systems. Fungal colonies have a number of properties that make them an excellent candidate for inspiration for engineered systems. Here we propose the application of such inspiration to a speckled computing platform. We argue that properties from fungal colonies map well to properties and requirements for controlling SpeckNets and suggest that an existing mathematical model of a fungal colony can developed into a new computational paradigm.

Myconet: A Fungi-Inspired Model for Superpeer-Based Peer-to-Peer Overlay Topologies

“…At the PerAda Summer School workshop in Rimini, Paechter et al recently proposed a novel biologically-inspired model based on the behavior of fungal colonies. [1] Their initial work applies a relatively low-level fungal model to routing in a small telecommunications network [2]. Our approach is more loosely inspired by fungal models and applies the metaphor at a higher level.…”

“…The inspiration for this work came from the root structures of fungi, mycelia, and the realization that these systems display self-organizing properties and can be used as a guiding metaphor for improving overlay networks in peer-to-peer systems. Fungi-inspired models have been previously proposed as a paradigm for pervasive adaptive systems [1], [2].…”

“…Mycelia have a number of self-organizing properties that have led researchers in the pervasive computing community to propose the use of fungal networks as the inspiration for a new paradigm for decentralized systems [1], [2]. Mycelia grow using decentralized, local interactions from which organization emerges, the are able to adjust to changing conditions or damage by dynamically altering hyphal structures.…”