Investigating Fluid-Flow Semantics of Asynchronous Tuple-Based Process Languages for Collective Adaptive Systems

Abstract

Abstract. Recently, there has been growing interest in nature-inspired interaction paradigms for Collective Adaptive Systems, for modelling and implementation of adaptive and context-aware coordination, among which the promising pheromone-based interaction paradigm. System modelling in the context of such a paradigm may be facilitated by the use of languages in which adaptive interaction is decoupled in time and space through asynchronous buffered communication, e.g. asynchronous, repository-or tuple-based languages. In this paper we propose a differential semantics for such languages. In particular, we consider an asynchronous, repository based modelling kernel-language which is a restricted version of LINDA, extended with stochastic information about action duration. We provide stochastic formal semantics for both an agent-based view and a population-based view. We then derive an ordinary differential equation semantics from the latter, which provides a fluid-flow deterministic approximation for the mean behaviour of large populations. We show the application of the language and the ODE analysis on a benchmark example of foraging ants.

Modelling and Analysis of Collective Adaptive Systems with CARMA and its Tools

“…We envisage providing CARMA with a fluid semantics and in general the exploitation of scalable specification and analysis techniques [25] to provide a key focus for on-going work. In this direction we refer also here to [21] where the process language ODELINDA has been proposed which provides an asynchronous, tuple-based, interaction paradigm for CAS. The language is equipped both with an individual-based Markovian semantics and with a population-based Markovian semantics.…”

On-the-Fly Mean-Field Model-Checking for Attribute-Based Coordination

“…Fluid semantics have proved very useful for reasoning about large coordination systems (see e.g. [23,6,18]). Predicate-/attribute-based inter-process communication has been originally proposed in [19] where several variants of predicate-/attributebased communication primitives-including blocking / non-blocking, bounded / unbounded-are discussed in the context of a study on high-level language constructs for distributed systems with decentralised control (see for instance [22]).…”