From distributed coordination to field calculus and aggregate computing

Viroli, Mirko; Beal, Jacob; Damiani, Ferruccio; Audrito, Giorgio; Casadei, Roberto; Pianini, Danilo

doi:10.1016/j.jlamp.2019.100486

Cited by 66 publications

(119 citation statements)

References 138 publications

(218 reference statements)

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“…Aggregate Computing [15,66] is a programming paradigm arising from the general need for capturing, linguistically and computationally, the self-organizing behavior of a (possibly large-scale, dynamic) collection of components. Its core idea is to shift from the traditional device-centric viewpoint, which focusses on the behavior of each individual agent, to an aggregate-centric viewpoint that emphasizes the global behavior of a collective or aggregate system (i.e., a whole set of interacting autonomous entities).…”

Section: Application To Aggregate Computingmentioning

confidence: 99%

Pulverization in Cyber-Physical Systems: Engineering the Self-Organizing Logic Separated from Deployment

et al. 2020

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Emerging cyber-physical systems, such as robot swarms, crowds of augmented people, and smart cities, require well-crafted self-organizing behavior to properly deal with dynamic environments and pervasive disturbances. However, the infrastructures providing networking and computing services to support these systems are becoming increasingly complex, layered and heterogeneous—consider the case of the edge–fog–cloud interplay. This typically hinders the application of self-organizing mechanisms and patterns, which are often designed to work on flat networks. To promote reuse of behavior and flexibility in infrastructure exploitation, we argue that self-organizing logic should be largely independent of the specific application deployment. We show that this separation of concerns can be achieved through a proposed “pulverization approach”: the global system behavior of application services gets broken into smaller computational pieces that are continuously executed across the available hosts. This model can then be instantiated in the aggregate computing framework, whereby self-organizing behavior is specified compositionally. We showcase how the proposed approach enables expressing the application logic of a self-organizing cyber-physical system in a deployment-independent fashion, and simulate its deployment on multiple heterogeneous infrastructures that include cloud, edge, and LoRaWAN network elements.

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Section: Application To Aggregate Computingmentioning

confidence: 99%

Pulverization in Cyber-Physical Systems: Engineering the Self-Organizing Logic Separated from Deployment

et al. 2020

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“…Several models and programming languages supporting encapsulation, modulation, and composition of services have been already proposed, e.g. the Field Calculus and the language Protelis [69].…”

Section: Attribute-based Programmingmentioning

confidence: 99%

Rigorous engineering of collective adaptive systems: special section

Nicola

Jähnichen

Wirsing

2020

Int J Softw Tools Technol Transfer

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An adaptive system is able to adapt at runtime to dynamically changing environments and to new requirements. Adaptive systems can be single adaptive entities or collective ones that consist of several collaborating entities. Rigorous engineering requires appropriate methods and tools that help guaranteeing that an adaptive system lives up to its intended purpose. This paper introduces the special section on "Rigorous Engineering of Collective Adaptive Systems." It presents the seven contributions of the section and gives a short overview of the field of rigorously engineering collective adaptive systems by structuring it according to three topics: systematic development, methods and theories for modelling and analysis, and techniques for programming and operating collective adaptive systems.

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“…Indeed, beyond the results that individual autonomous agents can carry out, a further opportunity lies in the collaboration of multiple agents or robots. Emerging macro-paradigms [6,7] provide an approach to programming whole collectives towards global goals. Aggregate computing or programming [7,8] is one such paradigm, formally grounded in a calculus of computational fields [9] (maps from agents to values) enabling functional specification and composition of collective behaviours.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Emerging macro-paradigms [6,7] provide an approach to programming whole collectives towards global goals. Aggregate computing or programming [7,8] is one such paradigm, formally grounded in a calculus of computational fields [9] (maps from agents to values) enabling functional specification and composition of collective behaviours. The major benefit of the aggregate programming approach is that it explicitly addresses collective adaptive behavior, rather than the behavior of individuals (which is addressed indirectly, as a consequence of the intended global behavior).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

A Programming Approach to Collective Autonomy

Casadei

Aguzzi

Viroli

2021

JSAN

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Research and technology developments on autonomous agents and autonomic computing promote a vision of artificial systems that are able to resiliently manage themselves and autonomously deal with issues at runtime in dynamic environments. Indeed, autonomy can be leveraged to unburden humans from mundane tasks (cf. driving and autonomous vehicles), from the risk of operating in unknown or perilous environments (cf. rescue scenarios), or to support timely decision-making in complex settings (cf. data-centre operations). Beyond the results that individual autonomous agents can carry out, a further opportunity lies in the collaboration of multiple agents or robots. Emerging macro-paradigms provide an approach to programming whole collectives towards global goals. Aggregate computing is one such paradigm, formally grounded in a calculus of computational fields enabling functional composition of collective behaviours that could be proved, under certain technical conditions, to be self-stabilising. In this work, we address the concept of collective autonomy, i.e., the form of autonomy that applies at the level of a group of individuals. As a contribution, we define an agent control architecture for aggregate multi-agent systems, discuss how the aggregate computing framework relates to both individual and collective autonomy, and show how it can be used to program collective autonomous behaviour. We exemplify the concepts through a simulated case study, and outline a research roadmap towards reliable aggregate autonomy.

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From distributed coordination to field calculus and aggregate computing

Cited by 66 publications

References 138 publications

Pulverization in Cyber-Physical Systems: Engineering the Self-Organizing Logic Separated from Deployment

Pulverization in Cyber-Physical Systems: Engineering the Self-Organizing Logic Separated from Deployment

Rigorous engineering of collective adaptive systems: special section

A Programming Approach to Collective Autonomy

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