Embodied Evolution in Collective Robotics: A Review

This paper provides an overview of evolutionary robotics techniques applied to on-line distributed evolution for robot collectives -- namely, embodied evolution. It provides a definition of embodied evolution as well as a thorough description of the underlying concepts and mechanisms. The paper also presents a comprehensive summary of research published in the field since its inception (1999-2017), providing various perspectives to identify the major trends. In particular, we identify a shift from considering embodied evolution as a parallel search method within small robot collectives (fewer than 10 robots) to embodied evolution as an on-line distributed learning method for designing collective behaviours in swarm-like collectives. The paper concludes with a discussion of applications and open questions, providing a milestone for past and an inspiration for future research.Comment: 23 pages, 1 figure, 1 tabl

Design and Performance Analysis of a Non-Standard EPICS Fast Controller

The large scientific projects present new technological challenges, such as the distributed control over a communication network. In particular, the middleware EPICS is the most extended communication standard in particle accelerators. The integration of modern control architectures in these EPICS networks is becoming common, as for example for the PXI/PXIe and xTCA hardware alternatives. In this work, a different integration procedure for PXIe real time controllers from National Instruments is proposed, using LabVIEW as the design tool. This methodology is considered and its performance is analyzed by means of a set of laboratory experiments. This control architecture is proposed for achieving the implementation requirements of the fast controllers, which need an important amount of computational power and signal processing capability, with a tight real-time demand. The present work studies the advantages and drawbacks of this methodology and presents its comprehensive evaluation by means of a laboratory test bench, designed for the application of systematic tests. These tests compare the proposed fast controller performance with a similar system implemented using an standard EPICS IOC provided by the CODAC system.Comment: This is the extended version of the Conference Record presented in the IEEE Real-Time Conference 2014, Nara, Japan. This paper has been submitted to the IEEE Transactions on Nuclear Scienc

ANCHOR: logically-centralized security for Software-Defined Networks

While the centralization of SDN brought advantages such as a faster pace of innovation, it also disrupted some of the natural defenses of traditional architectures against different threats. The literature on SDN has mostly been concerned with the functional side, despite some specific works concerning non-functional properties like 'security' or 'dependability'. Though addressing the latter in an ad-hoc, piecemeal way, may work, it will most likely lead to efficiency and effectiveness problems. We claim that the enforcement of non-functional properties as a pillar of SDN robustness calls for a systemic approach. As a general concept, we propose ANCHOR, a subsystem architecture that promotes the logical centralization of non-functional properties. To show the effectiveness of the concept, we focus on 'security' in this paper: we identify the current security gaps in SDNs and we populate the architecture middleware with the appropriate security mechanisms, in a global and consistent manner. Essential security mechanisms provided by anchor include reliable entropy and resilient pseudo-random generators, and protocols for secure registration and association of SDN devices. We claim and justify in the paper that centralizing such mechanisms is key for their effectiveness, by allowing us to: define and enforce global policies for those properties; reduce the complexity of controllers and forwarding devices; ensure higher levels of robustness for critical services; foster interoperability of the non-functional property enforcement mechanisms; and promote the security and resilience of the architecture itself. We discuss design and implementation aspects, and we prove and evaluate our algorithms and mechanisms, including the formalisation of the main protocols and the verification of their core security properties using the Tamarin prover.Comment: 42 pages, 4 figures, 3 tables, 5 algorithms, 139 reference

Legacy Network Integration with SDN-IP Implementation towards a Multi-Domain SoDIP6 Network Environment

[EN] The logical separation of the data plane and the control plane of the network device conceptually defined by software-defined networking (SDN) creates many opportunities to create smart networking with better efficiency for network management and operation. SDN implementation over telecommunications (Telcos) and Internet service provider (ISP) networks is a challenging issue due to the lack of a high maturity level of SDN-based standards and several other critical factors that are considered during the real-time migration of existing legacy IPv4 networks. Different migration approaches have been studied; however, none of them seem to be close to realizing implementation. This paper implements the SDN-IP and Open Network Operating System (ONOS) SDN controller to migrate legacy IPv4 networks to multi-domain software-defined IPv6 (SoDIP6) networks and experimentally evaluate the viability of joint network migration in the ISP networks. We present results using extensive simulations for the suitable placement of the master ONOS controller during network migration by considering minimum control path latency using optimal path routing and the breadth first router replacement (BFR) technique. Our empirical analysis and evaluations show that the identification of the median router to attach the master controller and router migration planning using BFR give better results for carrier-grade legacy networks' migration to SoDIP6 networks.This research was partially funded by the Norwegian University of Science and Technology, Trondhiem, Norway (NTNU) under Sustainable Engineering Education Project (SEEP) financed by EnPE, University Grant Commission (grant-ID: FRG7475Engg01), Bhaktapur, Nepal, Nepal academy of Science and Technology (NAST), Kathmandu, Nepal, and U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF). The work of Danda B. Rawat was partly supported by the U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF) under grants CNS 1650831 and HRD 1828811. Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this article are those of the authors and should not be interpreted as necessarily representing the official policies, either expressed or implied, of the NSF. We are thankful to the ERASMUS+ KA107 project and the GRC lab team members at Universitat Politècnica De València for the research support and facilitation.Dawadi, BR.; Rawat, DB.; Joshi, SR.; Manzoni, P. (2020). Legacy Network Integration with SDN-IP Implementation towards a Multi-Domain SoDIP6 Network Environment. Electronics. 9(9):1-22. https://doi.org/10.3390/electronics9091454S12299Dawadi, B. R., Rawat, D. B., & Joshi, S. R. (2019). Software Defined IPv6 Network: A New Paradigm for Future Networking. Journal of the Institute of Engineering, 15(2), 1-13. doi:10.3126/jie.v15i2.27636Dawadi, B. R., Rawat, D. B., Joshi, S. R., & Manzoni, P. 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IEEE Communications Magazine, 55(4), 71-79. doi:10.1109/mcom.2017.1600194SDN-IP Arhitecture https://wiki.onosproject.org/display/ONOS/SDN-IP+ArchitectureLee, H.-L., Liu, T.-L., & Chen, M. (2019). Deploying SDN-IP over Transnational Network Testbed. 2019 IEEE International Conference on Consumer Electronics - Taiwan (ICCE-TW). doi:10.1109/icce-tw46550.2019.8991776Das, T., Sridharan, V., & Gurusamy, M. (2020). A Survey on Controller Placement in SDN. IEEE Communications Surveys & Tutorials, 22(1), 472-503. doi:10.1109/comst.2019.2935453Chen, W., Chen, C., Jiang, X., & Liu, L. (2018). Multi-Controller Placement Towards SDN Based on Louvain Heuristic Algorithm. IEEE Access, 6, 49486-49497. doi:10.1109/access.2018.2867931Qi, Y., Wang, D., Yao, W., Li, H., & Cao, Y. (2019). Towards Multi-Controller Placement for SDN Based on Density Peaks Clustering. 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ACM SIGCOMM Computer Communication Review, 42(4), 473-478. doi:10.1145/2377677.2377767SDN Control Plane Performance: Raising the Bar on SDN Performance, Scalability, and High Availability https://wiki.onosproject.org/download/attachments/13994369/Whitepaper-%20ONOS%20Kingfisher%20release%20performance.pdf?version=