Heaven and Hell: visions for pervasive adaptation

With everyday objects becoming increasingly smart and the “info-sphere” being enriched with nano-sensors and networked to computationally-enabled devices and services, the way we interact with our environment has changed significantly, and will continue to change rapidly in the next few years. Being user-centric, novel systems will tune their behaviour to individuals, taking into account users’ personal characteristics and preferences. But having a pervasive adaptive environment that understands and supports us “behaving naturally” with all its tempting charm and usability, may also bring latent risks, as we seamlessly give up our privacy (and also personal control) to a pervasive world of business-oriented goals of which we simply may be unaware

Adaptive and autonomous systems and their impact on us

With technology becoming increasingly ubiquitous and through a wide use of interconnected “smart devices”, the impacts these advanced products have on us is gaining in significance. As technology providers, we are very proud to share the tribute for creating new infrastructures that bring benefits to individuals and society and make life easier. But we may also be held responsible for the possible detrimental impacts that new technology brought about. Especially, if we ignore the threatening consequences and fail to offer some protective solutions. Up to now, there has been some attention paid to privacy issues and security of commercial transactions, but the negative influence of “smart” technology on human behavior has been widely neglected. This paper considers the effects that adaptive and autonomous technologies have on their users. As the impacts can best be observed in practice, a number of application scenarios are taken into account, illustrating both the technical aspects and their possible effects on us

Autonomous systems: From requirements to modeling and implementation

Developing autonomous systems requires adaptable and context aware techniques. The approach described here decomposes a complex system into service components-functionally simple building blocks enriched with local knowledge attributes. The internal components' knowledge is used to dynamically construct ensembles of service components. Thus, ensembles capture collective behavior by grouping service components in many-to-many manner, according to their communication and operational/functional requirements. Linguistic constructs and software tools have been developed to support modeling, validation, development and deployment of autonomous systems. A strong pragmatic orientation of the approach is illustrated by two different scenarios

Simulating Artificial Neural Networks on Parallel Architectures

Parallelism and distribution have been considered the key features of neural processing. The term parallel distributed processing is even used as a synonym for artificial neural networks. Nevertheless, the actual implementations are still in search of the appropriate model to "naturally represent" neural computing. And the final judgement is always given in performance figures -- keeping the parallelization issue high on the neurosimulation agenda. Two approaches have yielded the best results: parallel simulations on general-purpose computers, and specially developed neurohardware. Programming neural networks on parallel machines requires high-level techniques reflecting both inherent features of neuromodels and characteristics of the underlying computers. On the other hand, emulation of the neuroparadigm requires that the functioning of neural operations be mimicked directly by the hardware. Both approaches are presented, and their advantages and shortcomings are outlined

Adaptive and personalized body networking

Body networking calls for novel methods and tools for a tight and implicit man machine confluence. One way to achieve this is to make technical systems sensitive and reactive to user personal situation. This paper describes service-oriented software architecture, designed to respond to the user via a biocybernetic loop that transforms changes in user behaviour into services that may be incorporated into a highly personalised user-centric system. These services are used to drive real-time system adaptation tailored to a specific individual in a particular usage context

Simulation of Artificial Neural Networks

The purpose of this paper is to give a structured overview of the current techniques used to simulate artificial neural networks. To illustrate the variety and the complexity of problems that occur, firstly a short survey of artificial neural networks is presented. Then, various simulation approaches are explained, from implementations of specific network models on general purpose parallel machines through architectural emulations that mimic neurobehaviour in hardware to comprehensive neurosimulators that offer comfortable environments for neuroprogramming. Each approach is presented through its rationales and is judged on its usefulness, generality, flexibility, and efficiency. The paper concludes with the summary of the results achieved so far and points out general directions and perspectives for future neurosimulations

Monitoring and visualizing adaptation of autonomic systems at runtime

Monitoring an autonomic system at runtime, which typically contains a large number of nodes operating in highly dynamic and open-ended environments, is very challenging for software architects. Solid software engineering methods and tools to support this process are therefore highly required. This paper proposes a novel monitoring and visualization framework for autonomic systems at runtime. Our approach is illustrated by an Eclipse plug-in for tracing the runtime awareness and adaptation capabilities using graph-like representation. A key benefit here is to provide feedback to the engineer about the behavior of the complex awareness mechanism used, thus helping the system evaluation process. We validate and assess our approach and plug-in with a concrete application scenario from swarm robotics domain

The Seat Adaptation System of REFLECT Project: Implementation of a Biocybernetic Loop in an Automotive Environment

This paper gives an overview of the REsponsive FLExible Collaborating ambienT (REFLECT) project, concerning the developing of new concepts and means for pervasive-adaptive systems. Reflective approach combines different know-how in affective and physiological computing, software engineering, physics and pragmatic expertise into a unique endeavour to design and develop user-centric systems that control the specific environment and react relative to users' emotional, cognitive and physical situation. The central philosophy is to mimic the natural process of adaptation by implementing a biocybernetic loop that senses, diagnoses and analyses the user situation in a concrete settings and react accordingly. In a pervasive manner, the approach effectively brings system adaptation into real-life applications, making them sensitive and reactive to human inner states and behaviours. To show how these concepts have been put into practice, the document describes in detail how the seat adaptation system of the "REFLECTive Comfort Loop" has been developed for in an automotive environment