Towards a Formal Verification Methodology for Collective Robotic Systems

We introduce a UML-based notation for graphically modeling systems’ security aspects in a simple and intuitive way and a model-driven process that transforms graphical specifications of access control policies in XACML. These XACML policies are then translated in FACPL, a policy language with a formal semantics, and the resulting policies are evaluated by means of a Java-based software tool

Nature-Inspired Coordination Models: Current Status and Future Trends

Coordination models and languages are meant to provide abstractions and mechanisms to harness the space of interaction as one of the foremost sources of complexity in computational systems. Nature-inspired computing aims at understanding the mechanisms and patterns of complex natural systems in order to bring their most desirable features to computational systems. Thus, the promise of nature-inspired coordination models is to prove themselves fundamental in the design of complex computational systems|such as intelligent, knowledge-intensive, pervasive, adaptive, and self-organising ones. In this paper, we survey the most relevant nature-inspired coordination models in the literature, focussing in particular on tuple-based models, and foresee the most interesting research trends in the field

Toward Entity-Aware Search

As the Web has evolved into a data-rich repository, with the standard "page view," current search engines are becoming increasingly inadequate for a wide range of query tasks. While we often search for various data "entities" (e.g., phone number, paper PDF, date), today's engines only take us indirectly to pages. In my Ph.D. study, we focus on a novel type of Web search that is aware of data entities inside pages, a significant departure from traditional document retrieval. We study the various essential aspects of supporting entity-aware Web search. To begin with, we tackle the core challenge of ranking entities, by distilling its underlying conceptual model Impression Model and developing a probabilistic ranking framework, EntityRank, that is able to seamlessly integrate both local and global information in ranking. We also report a prototype system built to show the initial promise of the proposal. Then, we aim at distilling and abstracting the essential computation requirements of entity search. From the dual views of reasoning--entity as input and entity as output, we propose a dual-inversion framework, with two indexing and partition schemes, towards efficient and scalable query processing. Further, to recognize more entity instances, we study the problem of entity synonym discovery through mining query log data. The results we obtained so far have shown clear promise of entity-aware search, in its usefulness, effectiveness, efficiency and scalability

Engineering environment-mediated coordination via nature-inspired laws

SAPERE is a general multiagent framework to support the development of self-organizing pervasive computing services. One of the key aspects of the SAPERE approach is to have all interactions between agents take place in an indirect way, via a shared spatial environment. In such environment, a set of nature-inspired coordination laws have been defined to rule the coordination activities of the application agents and promote the provisioning of adaptive and self-organizing services

Decentralized Coordination in Self-Organizing Systems based on Peer-to-Peer Coordination Spaces

Coordination is an important aspect to realize Self-organizing Systemsusually implemented as part of the functional properties of the system. This paper promotes a separation of concerns via a declarative approach to realize decentralized coordination in Self-organizing Multi-Agent Systems (MAS). In previous work the concept of Coordination Spaces was developed which provides explicit support for the task of coordination in MAS. Coordination Spaces are part of the agent environment and handle a declarative description of the coordination process. Thereby, this approach allows developers rather focusing on what to coordinate than on how to  coordinate. Also by releasing the developer from programming coordination manually, the approach offers benefits like reusability and interoperability of coordination processes. This paper extends the approach by a distribution concept for coordination spaces. By using different techniques like remote service calls, group communicationand publish/subscribe models the distribution of information among multiple platforms in a peer-to-peer like approach is achieved

A Coordination Language for Databases

We present a coordination language for the modeling of distributed database applications. The language, baptized Klaim-DB, borrows the concepts of localities and nets of the coordination language Klaim but re-incarnates the tuple spaces of Klaim as databases. It provides high-level abstractions and primitives for the access and manipulation of structured data, with integrity and atomicity considerations. We present the formal semantics of Klaim-DB and develop a type system that avoids potential runtime errors such as certain evaluation errors and mismatches of data format in tables, which are monitored in the semantics. The use of the language is illustrated in a scenario where the sales from different branches of a chain of department stores are aggregated from their local databases. Raising the abstraction level and encapsulating integrity checks in the language primitives have benefited the modeling task considerably

Engineering Self-Adaptive Collective Processes for Cyber-Physical Ecosystems

The pervasiveness of computing and networking is creating significant opportunities for building valuable socio-technical systems. However, the scale, density, heterogeneity, interdependence, and QoS constraints of many target systems pose severe operational and engineering challenges. Beyond individual smart devices, cyber-physical collectives can provide services or solve complex problems by leveraging a “system effect” while coordinating and adapting to context or environment change. Understanding and building systems exhibiting collective intelligence and autonomic capabilities represent a prominent research goal, partly covered, e.g., by the field of collective adaptive systems. Therefore, drawing inspiration from and building on the long-time research activity on coordination, multi-agent systems, autonomic/self-* systems, spatial computing, and especially on the recent aggregate computing paradigm, this thesis investigates concepts, methods, and tools for the engineering of possibly large-scale, heterogeneous ensembles of situated components that should be able to operate, adapt and self-organise in a decentralised fashion. The primary contribution of this thesis consists of four main parts. First, we define and implement an aggregate programming language (ScaFi), internal to the mainstream Scala programming language, for describing collective adaptive behaviour, based on field calculi. Second, we conceive of a “dynamic collective computation” abstraction, also called aggregate process, formalised by an extension to the field calculus, and implemented in ScaFi. Third, we characterise and provide a proof-of-concept implementation of a middleware for aggregate computing that enables the development of aggregate systems according to multiple architectural styles. Fourth, we apply and evaluate aggregate computing techniques to edge computing scenarios, and characterise a design pattern, called Self-organising Coordination Regions (SCR), that supports adjustable, decentralised decision-making and activity in dynamic environments.Con lo sviluppo di informatica e intelligenza artificiale, la diffusione pervasiva di device computazionali e la crescente interconnessione tra elementi fisici e digitali, emergono innumerevoli opportunità per la costruzione di sistemi socio-tecnici di nuova generazione. Tuttavia, l'ingegneria di tali sistemi presenta notevoli sfide, data la loro complessità—si pensi ai livelli, scale, eterogeneità, e interdipendenze coinvolti. Oltre a dispositivi smart individuali, collettivi cyber-fisici possono fornire servizi o risolvere problemi complessi con un “effetto sistema” che emerge dalla coordinazione e l'adattamento di componenti fra loro, l'ambiente e il contesto. Comprendere e costruire sistemi in grado di esibire intelligenza collettiva e capacità autonomiche è un importante problema di ricerca studiato, ad esempio, nel campo dei sistemi collettivi adattativi. Perciò, traendo ispirazione e partendo dall'attività di ricerca su coordinazione, sistemi multiagente e self-*, modelli di computazione spazio-temporali e, specialmente, sul recente paradigma di programmazione aggregata, questa tesi tratta concetti, metodi, e strumenti per l'ingegneria di ensemble di elementi situati eterogenei che devono essere in grado di lavorare, adattarsi, e auto-organizzarsi in modo decentralizzato. Il contributo di questa tesi consiste in quattro parti principali. In primo luogo, viene definito e implementato un linguaggio di programmazione aggregata (ScaFi), interno al linguaggio Scala, per descrivere comportamenti collettivi e adattativi secondo l'approccio dei campi computazionali. In secondo luogo, si propone e caratterizza l'astrazione di processo aggregato per rappresentare computazioni collettive dinamiche concorrenti, formalizzata come estensione al field calculus e implementata in ScaFi. Inoltre, si analizza e implementa un prototipo di middleware per sistemi aggregati, in grado di supportare più stili architetturali. Infine, si applicano e valutano tecniche di programmazione aggregata in scenari di edge computing, e si propone un pattern, Self-Organising Coordination Regions, per supportare, in modo decentralizzato, attività decisionali e di regolazione in ambienti dinamici