Article in Transactions on Cyber-physical Systems accepted for publication

Together with John NA Brown I am working on Networked Self-awareness for several years now – today, our article on the subject has been accepted for publication in the Transactions on Cyber-physical Systems. The paper is entitled “I Think Therefore You Are: Models for Interaction in Collectives of Self-Aware Cyber-physical Systems“.

Abstract: When multiple robots are required to collaborate in order to accomplish a specific task, they need to be coordinated in order to operate efficiently. To allow for scalability and robustness, we propose a novel distributed approach performed by autonomous robots based on their willingness to help each other. This willingness, based on their individual state, is used to inform a decision process of whether or not to interact with other robots within the environment. We study this new mechanism to form coalitions in the online multi-object k-coverage problem, and compare it with six other methods from the literature. We investigate the trade-off between the number of robots available and the number of potential targets in the environment. We show that the proposed method is able to provide comparable performance to the best method in the case of static targets, and to achieve a higher level of coverage with respect to the other methods when the targets are moving.

SISSY 2019 Papers accepted

Both papers submitted to the Workshop on Self-Improving System Integration (SISSY) have been accepted for publication.

The first paper, entitled “CHARIOT – Towards a Continuous High-level Adaptive Runtime Integration Testbed” was a collaborative effort of Chloe Barnes and Peter Lewis (both Aston University), Kirstie Bellman and Chris Landauer (both Topcy House Consulting), Joen Botev (University of Luxemburg), Ada Diaconescu (Telecom ParisTech), Christian Gruhl and Sven Tomforde (both University of Kassel), Phyllis Nelson (California State Polytechnical University), Anthony Stein (University of Augsburg), and Christopher Steward (Ohio State University).

The second paper, entitled “”When you believe in things that you don’t understand”: the effect of cross-generational habits on self-improving system integration” was written together with Chloe Barnes (Aston University) and John NA Brown (LinkedIn).

“CHARIOT – Towards a Continuous High-level Adaptive Runtime Integration Testbed” – ABSTRACT: Integrated networked systems sense a common environment, learn to navigate the environment and share their experiences. Sharing experiences simplifies learning, reducing costly trial and error in complex environments. However, integration produces dependencies that make constituent systems less robust to failures, unexpected outputs and performance anomalies. Even with APIs and reflective, self-aware techniques, system integration still requires expert programming and tuning. Self-integrating systems proposed in recent research automate integration, but can be challenging to validate at scale. We therefore propose CHARIOT, a common test environment to allow for different approaches and systems to be deployed, assessed and compared on a shared platform for the development of self-integrating systems. In this paper, we discuss the underlying requirements and challenges, potential metrics, and a system metamodel to accommodate these.

“”When you believe in things that you don’t understand”: the effect of cross-generational habits on self-improving system integration” – ABSTRACT: Humans experiencing unexpected feedback to certain actions which they are not able to explain, might develop superstitious behaviour. In this paper, we discuss that similar behaviour might also occur in engineered systems. We provide a thought-experiment regarding such behaviour in computational systems. This will be a first step towards an awareness of others and their affect on the system itself as described in networked self-awareness.

ALIFE 2019 paper accepted

The paper written in collaboration with David King and Gilbert Peterson (both AFIT Ohio) got accepted for this years Conference on Artificial Life (ALIFE conference). The paper is entitled “Entropy-Based Team Self-Organization with Signal Suppression”

Abstract

Self-organized and distributed control methods are increasingly important as they allow multi-agent systems to scale more readily than centralized control techniques. Furthermore, these methods increase system robustness and flexibility. In the online multi-object k-coverage domain studied here, a collective of autonomous agents must dynamically form sub-teams to accomplish two concurrent tasks: target discovery and coverage. Once a target is discovered, the collective of agents must create a sub-team of k-agents to cover the target. The work presented here introduces a novel, entropy-based task selection technique that incorporates signal suppression behaviors found in bee colonies. We test the technique in the online multi-object k-coverage domain while exploring three team properties: heterogeneity, team size, and sensor ranges, and their impact on multi-task accomplishment. Results show that signal suppression helps avoid over-provisioning of team resources to individual targets, dynamically creating sub-teams that simultaneously accomplish target discovery and coverage tasks.

SASO 2018 Paper accepted

Our paper to this years International Conference on Self-Adaptive and Self-Organising Systems has been accepted for presentation.

The paper is entitled Goal-aware Team Affiliation in Collectives of Autonomous Robots and investigates the potential of robots to dynamically affiliate themselves with a team. This is done without explicit communication or interaction but based on aggregated information from the network allowing each individual to derive the current state of achieving their teams goal. Importantly the goals of the different teams are complimentary.

Paper accepted for special session @ ICDSC

Our paper, entitled “The Future of Camera Networks: Staying Smart in a Chaotic World”, has been accepted for oral presentation at the special session on Target Tracking and Person Re-Identification at this years International Conference on Distributed Smart Cameras. The paper was written in collaboration Peter Lewis, Richie McBride, and Xin Yao.

We are excited to discuss our vision of future camera networks with colleagues at ICDSC!

Paper accepted @ ATVA 2017

Our paper on the resilient coordination of (artificial) birds to fly in a V-formation has been accepted for presentation at the Fifteenth International Symposium on Automated Technology for Verification and Analysis. The paper is entitled Attacking the V: On the Resiliency of Adaptive-Horizon MPC and has been written jointly by Ashish Tiwari (SRI), Scott A. Smolka (SUNY Stony Brook), Lukas Esterle, Anna Lukina (TU Wien), Junxing Yang (SUNY Stony Brook) and Radu Grosu (TU WIEN).

ICDSC 2017 Paper accepted

Our paper entitled “Online Multi-object k-coverage with Mobile Smart Cameras” has been accepted for presentation at the International Conference on Distributed Smart Cameras. The paper discusses mobile smart cameras and how to coordinated them in a distributed fashion in order to ensure objects to be covered by at least cameras at the same time. This extends the well known Cooperative Multi-Robot Observation of Multiple Moving Targets problem (CMOMMT). The paper has been written in cooperation with Peter Lewis.