Workshop on
Methods for Self-Organizing Distributed Systems (MeSoDiSy) - 2016

Oct 13-14, 2016
Ghent, Belgium

Scope:
In the spirit of MeSoDiSy 2015, we want to continue along the lines that there are common tool sets for self-organizing systems across many different fields of research. While the focus last year was on learning about different methods and determining common challenges, we want to get into more technical detail for a chosen challenge this year. Options are: micro-macro transformation, real-world implementations of hybrid systems, or autonomous cars and self-organized traffic.
In particular, we focus on the challenges of "Stochasticity, Uncertainty, Unpredictability" combined with "Dynamic Environments and Run-Time Decisions" and our selected application focus is "Real-world implementations of hybrid systems".

Challenge: Stochasticity, Uncertainty, Unpredictability
Most real-world environments show a high degree of stochasticity, which makes it challenging to deploy hybrid societies in real-world applications. We need methodologies to deal with known uncertainties but also to deal with unforeseen uncertainties. For collective behaviors, we are missing a general model that could be used to verify the system against the expected behaviors. In addition, there might be even unpredictable behaviors [cf., emergent behavior Matarić (1993) and Bedau (2002)] that prevent us from assuring that the system never leaves the set of safe states.

Challenge: Dynamic Environments, Run-Time Decisions, and Open Systems
Related to the above complex problems, we also face the challenge of dynamic environments that require non-trivial run-time decisions of our system. Run-time decisions and coupling the collective hybrid society with other systems at run-time require new methodologies. Especially systems with high requirements for robustness operating in dynamic environments have to be able to appropriately self-adapt their behaviors and organization structure (e.g., topology). The required time for non-productive reorganization and adaptation processes should be minimal. If we allow dynamic changes of the system size, that is, we have an open system, then we need to tackle the challenge of scalability at runtime as well. This adds additional uncertainties introduced by added or removed system components. These changes need to be balanced by the system at run-time to establish a stable and robust system behavior. We often face difficulties when attempting to make guarantees about the behaviors of our systems and in the scenarios when existing techniques can be used they often model a fixed number of agents, making our proofs meaningless as the size of our collective changes dynamically.


also see the paper of MeSoDiSy 2015:
Hybrid Societies: Challenges and Perspectives in the Design of Collective Behavior in Self-organizing Systems

• Get off at the stop 'Bollebergen'.
• "Technologiepark" is then straight in front of you on the other side of the street.

Shuttle bus
The shuttle service between Gent Sint-Pieters and Technologiepark runs every 15 minutes during peak hours (7.30 - 9.30 am and 4.30 - 6.30 pm). The site has four stops, including one nearly in front of the iGent Tower (4th stop). More info: Shuttle bus.

Organizers:
Yara Khaluf (Ghent University, yara.khaluf@ugent.be)
Heiko Hamann (Univ. of Paderborn, heiko.hamann@upb.de)