Understanding Behavior of System of Systems Through Computational Intelligence Techniques

The world is facing an increasing level of systems integration leading towards systems of systems (SoS) that adapt to changing environmental conditions. The number of connections between components, the diversity of the components and the way the components are organized can lead to different emergent system behavior. Therefore, the need to focus on overall system behavior is becoming an unavoidable issue. The problem is to develop methodologies appropriate for better understanding behavior of system of systems before the design and implementation phase. This paper focuses on computational intelligence techniques used for analysis of complex adaptive systems with the aim of identifying areas that need methodology customization for SoS analysis

Architecting system of systems: artificial life analysis of financial market behavior

This research study focuses on developing a framework that can be utilized by system architects to understand the emergent behavior of system architectures. The objective is to design a framework that is modular and flexible in providing different ways of modeling sub-systems of System of Systems. At the same time, the framework should capture the adaptive behavior of the system since evolution is one of the key characteristics of System of Systems. Another objective is to design the framework so that humans can be incorporated into the analysis. The framework should help system architects understand the behavior as well as promoters or inhibitors of change in human systems. Computational intelligence tools have been successfully used in analysis of Complex Adaptive Systems. Since a System of Systems is a collection of Complex Adaptive Systems, a framework utilizing combination of these tools can be developed. Financial markets are selected to demonstrate the various architectures developed from the analysis framework --Introduction, page 3

Modular system design approach for cyber physical production systems

As manufacturing enters a new paradigm of cyber production, new methods are required to support the production system design activity. These methods have to take into consideration both the cyber and physical aspects of the system design, whilst also satisfying requirements of modularity, connectivity and intelligence. This paper presents a modular system design approach for cyber-physical production systems, which is based on the established systematic method of modular function deployment. The result of applying this design approach is a modular system architecture which describes the system modules for both cyber and physical aspects of the production system.peer-reviewe

On microelectronic self-learning cognitive chip systems

After a brief review of machine learning techniques and applications, this Ph.D. thesis examines several approaches for implementing machine learning architectures and algorithms into hardware within our laboratory. From this interdisciplinary background support, we have motivations for novel approaches that we intend to follow as an objective of innovative hardware implementations of dynamically self-reconfigurable logic for enhanced self-adaptive, self-(re)organizing and eventually self-assembling machine learning systems, while developing this new particular area of research. And after reviewing some relevant background of robotic control methods followed by most recent advanced cognitive controllers, this Ph.D. thesis suggests that amongst many well-known ways of designing operational technologies, the design methodologies of those leading-edge high-tech devices such as cognitive chips that may well lead to intelligent machines exhibiting conscious phenomena should crucially be restricted to extremely well defined constraints. Roboticists also need those as specifications to help decide upfront on otherwise infinitely free hardware/software design details. In addition and most importantly, we propose these specifications as methodological guidelines tightly related to ethics and the nowadays well-identified workings of the human body and of its psyche

Service-oriented architecture for device lifecycle support in industrial automation

Dissertação para obtenção do Grau de Doutor em Engenharia Electrotécnica e de Computadores Especialidade: Robótica e Manufactura IntegradaThis thesis addresses the device lifecycle support thematic in the scope of service oriented industrial automation domain. This domain is known for its plethora of heterogeneous equipment encompassing distinct functions, form factors, network interfaces, or I/O specifications supported by dissimilar software and hardware platforms. There is then an evident and crescent need to take every device into account and improve the agility performance during setup, control, management, monitoring and diagnosis phases. Service-oriented Architecture (SOA) paradigm is currently a widely endorsed approach for both business and enterprise systems integration. SOA concepts and technology are continuously spreading along the layers of the enterprise organization envisioning a unified interoperability solution. SOA promotes discoverability, loose coupling, abstraction, autonomy and composition of services relying on open web standards – features that can provide an important contribution to the industrial automation domain. The present work seized industrial automation device level requirements, constraints and needs to determine how and where can SOA be employed to solve some of the existent difficulties. Supported by these outcomes, a reference architecture shaped by distributed, adaptive and composable modules is proposed. This architecture will assist and ease the role of systems integrators during reengineering-related interventions throughout system lifecycle. In a converging direction, the present work also proposes a serviceoriented device model to support previous architecture vision and goals by including embedded added-value in terms of service-oriented peer-to-peer discovery and identification, configuration, management, as well as agile customization of device resources. In this context, the implementation and validation work proved not simply the feasibility and fitness of the proposed solution to two distinct test-benches but also its relevance to the expanding domain of SOA applications to support device lifecycle in the industrial automation domain

Increase the adoption of Agent-based Cyber-Physical Production Systems through the Design of Minimally Invasive Solutions

During the last few years, many approaches were proposed to offer companies the ability to have dynamic and flexible production systems. One of the conventional ap-proaches to solving this problem is the implementation of cyber-physical production sys-tems using multi-agent distributed systems. Although these systems can deal with several challenges faced by companies in this area, they have not been accepted and used in real cases. In this way, the primary objective of the proposed work is to understand the chal-lenges usually found in the adoption of these solutions and to develop a strategy to in-crease their acceptance and implementation. Thus, the document focuses on the design and development of cyber-physical produc-tion systems based on agent approaches, requiring minimal changes in the existing pro-duction systems. This approach aims of reducing the impact and the alterations needed to adopt those new cyber-physical production systems. Clarifying the subject, the author presents a definition of a minimal invasive agent-based cyber-physical production system and, the functional requirements that the designers and developers must respect to imple-ment the new software. From these functional requirements derived a list of design princi-ples that must be fulfilled to design and develop a system with these characteristics. Subsequently, to evaluate solutions that aim to be minimally invasive, an evaluation model based on a fuzzy inference system is proposed, which rank the approaches accord-ing to each of the design principles and globally. In this way, the proposed work presents the functional requirements, design principles and evaluation model of minimally invasive cyber-physical production systems, to increase the adoption of such systems

EvoEvo Deliverable 6.8: Final report

Final report of the EvoEvo project

Empirically characterizing evolvability and changeability in engineering systems

Thesis (S.M.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Aeronautics and Astronautics, 2012."June 2012." Cataloged from PDF version of thesis.Includes bibliographical references (p. 205-212).The beginning phases of system development and conceptual design require careful consideration, as these decisions will have significant influence on system lifetime performance and are often made with incomplete system knowledge. Decision makers may improve their capacity to discriminate between system concepts and design choices by measuring a system's "ilities" such as changeability, evolvability, and survivability. These ilities may enable systems to respond to perturbations in the design space, context space, and needs space in order to ensure system functionality and adequate performance over time. A system may be designed to change in response to perturbations, or remain statically robust/survivable to perturbations in order to avoid deficiencies or failures. This research attempts to analyze the mechanisms that allow system changes to occur. More specifically, this research will further the characterization of system changeability and evolvability and ultimately provide a structured and meaningful way of classifying system characteristics often described as "ilities". Value sustainment is proposed as an ultimate goal of systems, providing value in spite of perturbations in design, context, or needs. The premise of value sustainment is investigated through four distinct research thrusts: 1) a basis for defining system changes and ilities; 2) a system change examples database with categorical cluster analysis case research; 3) epoch-shift, impact, response, outcome case research; and 4) expert interviews case research. Focusing on change-related ilities, this research proposes constructs for identifying and enabling vague, yet desirable, system properties. Evolvability is characterized as a subset of changeability and defined as the ability of an architecture to be inherited and changed across generations [over time], with a set of ten proposed design principles including decentralization, redundancy, targeted modularity, scalability, integrability, reconfigurability, mimicry, leverage ancestry, disruptive architectural overhaul, and resourceful exaptation.by Jay Clark Beesemyer, Jr.S.M