Enhancing service-oriented holonic multi-agent systems with self-organization

Multi-agents systems and holonic manufacturing systems are suitable approaches to design a new and alternative class of production control systems, based on the decentralization of control functions over distributed autonomous and cooperative entities. However, in spite of their enormous potential they lack some aspects related to interoperability, migration, optimisation in decentralised structures and truly self-adaptation. This paper discusses the advantages of combining these paradigms with complementary paradigms, such as service-oriented architectures, and enhancing them with biologically inspired algorithms and techniques, such as emergent behaviour and self-organization, to reach a truly robust, agile and adaptive control system. An example of applying a stigmergy-based algorithm to dynamically route pallets in a production system is also provided

Bio-inspired Mechanisms for Artificial Self-organised Systems

Research on self-organization tries to describe and explain forms, complex patterns and behaviours that arise from a collection of entities without an external organizer. As researchers in artificial systems, our aim is not to mimic self-organizing phenomena arising in Nature, but to understand and to control underlying mechanisms allowing desired emergence of forms, complex patterns and behaviours. In this paper we analyze three forms of self-organization: stigmergy, reinforcement mechanisms and cooperation. For each forms of self-organisation, we present a case study to show how we transposed it to some artificial systems and then analyse the strengths and weaknesses of such an approach

Digital twin-based optimiser for self-organised collaborative cyber-physical production systems

Publisher Copyright: © 2021 The Author(s)The advantages of using collaborative and distributed systems to control and optimise industrial environments have been explored in recent years. However, the self-organised and dynamic approaches that deliver these same advantages bring challenges associated with the long-term unpredictability of these approaches. The proposed work aims to present a framework that integrates a Digital Twin-based Optimiser within these systems to predict the system's evolution and reconfigure it if required. Digital Twins can be an essential advantage in adopting these systems due to the possibility of carrying out simulations at an accelerated speed and reconfiguring the self-organised control system.publishersversionpublishe

Personal mobile grids with a honeybee inspired resource scheduler

This thesis was submitted for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy and awarded by Brunel University.The overall aim of the thesis has been to introduce Personal Mobile Grids (PMGrids) as a novel paradigm in grid computing that scales grid infrastructures to mobile devices and extends grid entities to individual personal users. In this thesis, architectural designs as well as simulation models for PM-Grids are developed. The core of any grid system is its resource scheduler. However, virtually all current conventional grid schedulers do not address the non-clairvoyant scheduling problem, where job information is not available before the end of execution. Therefore, this thesis proposes a honeybee inspired resource scheduling heuristic for PM-Grids (HoPe) incorporating a radical approach to grid resource scheduling to tackle this problem. A detailed design and implementation of HoPe with a decentralised self-management and adaptive policy are initiated. Among the other main contributions are a comprehensive taxonomy of grid systems as well as a detailed analysis of the honeybee colony and its nectar acquisition process (NAP), from the resource scheduling perspective, which have not been presented in any previous work, to the best of our knowledge. PM-Grid designs and HoPe implementation were evaluated thoroughly through a strictly controlled empirical evaluation framework with a well-established heuristic in high throughput computing, the opportunistic scheduling heuristic (OSH), as a benchmark algorithm. Comparisons with optimal values and worst bounds are conducted to gain a clear insight into HoPe behaviour, in terms of stability, throughput, turnaround time and speedup, under different running conditions of number of jobs and grid scales. Experimental results demonstrate the superiority of HoPe performance where it has successfully maintained optimum stability and throughput in more than 95% of the experiments, with HoPe achieving three times better than the OSH under extremely heavy loads. Regarding the turnaround time and speedup, HoPe has effectively achieved less than 50% of the turnaround time incurred by the OSH, while doubling its speedup in more than 60% of the experiments. These results indicate the potential of both PM-Grids and HoPe in realising futuristic grid visions. Therefore considering the deployment of PM-Grids in real life scenarios and the utilisation of HoPe in other parallel processing and high throughput computing systems are recommended

Description and composition of bio-inspired design patterns: a complete overview

In the last decade, bio-inspired self-organising mechanisms have been applied to different domains, achieving results beyond traditional approaches. However, researchers usually use these mechanisms in an ad-hoc manner. In this way, their interpretation, definition, boundary (i.e. when one mechanism stops, and when another starts), and implementation typically vary in the existing literature, thus preventing these mechanisms from being applied clearly and systematically to solve recurrent problems. To ease engineering of artificial bio-inspired systems, this paper describes a catalogue of bio-inspired mechanisms in terms of modular and reusable design patterns organised into different layers. This catalogue uniformly frames and classifies a variety of different patterns. Additionally, this paper places the design patterns inside existing self-organising methodologies and hints for selecting and using a design patter

Exploring communication and collective behaviour between spatially organised inorganic protocell communities

A living system profoundly relies on mass, information and energy interactions through cell-cell and cell-environment networks. As a step towards understanding such interactions, it is beneficial to design and create bottom-up artificial living systems from non-living components, with a specific focus on synergistic interactivity between artificial cells (protocells) and their local environment. Although there are several routes for fabricating protocellular systems, we recognise key challenges associated with a) developing protocellular models with high levels of organisational tunability, b) achieving cell-environment bilateral communication, and c) realising autonomous self-assembly and regulation of protocell systems. The aim of this thesis is thus to review some matrix-based and matrix-free methods of inorganic protocell (colloidosome) 3D-spatial organisation, as judicious system designs capable of cell-cell and cell-environment communication, collective behaviours, and dynamic self-assembly, in close relation with local environments.The first experimental chapter details assembly of colloidosomes within hydrogel or coacervate-based matrices. A droplet microfluidic technique is employed as a novel method for encapsulating segregated colloidosome colonies within alginate hydrogel microspheres. The technique exploits high tunability for customisable size, ratio, microscale geometry, and 3D-patterning parameters. Benefiting from the versatility associated with such matrix-based systems, the second experimental chapter develops 3D-organised colloidosomes for collective signalling and emergent behaviours. Notably, spatially segregated colonies show proximity-mediated chemical communication with increased kinetics compared to analogous homogenous arrangements. This proximity-enhanced colloidosome signalling is exploited, alongside segregated ionic/covalent crosslinking transitions in the environment, to obtain simultaneous structural degradation and resilience of hydrogel hemispheres as a programmable mechanism for protocell ejection. Colloidosomes are also employed as simple signalling hotspots within coacervate-matrix systems. The final experimental chapter aims to re-imagine colloidosome organisation into a matrix-free system, capable of dynamic self-assembly and self-sorting via electrostatically-active membrane appendages. Alginate-coated and chitosan-coated colloidosomes are either co-assembled or self-sorted, in response to varied pH environments. Again, these systems are highly coordinated with their environment and as such, can be spatially pattered according to temporal pH changes through endogenous enzyme catalysis. Furthermore, a spatiotemporal effect on the rate of colloidosome communication in the presence of a hostile guest molecule is demonstrated. <br/