CONCEPTUAL MAP AND CLASSIFICATION

IN ENSEMBLES OF

AUTONOMIC COMPONENTS: FROM

AWARENESS TO

ORGANIZATION

Nicola Capodieci and Giacomo Cabri

University of Modena and Reggio Emilia

CONTENTS

Background

Motivation

Trees of concepts

Ensemble as whole

Single components features

Communication

Adaptation

Awareness

Conclusions and future work

BACKGROUND

Ensembles of autonomic components have to

Be independent

Have little or no human interaction

Be reliable

Be adaptive

Self-organize

Self-express

Self-aware (*-awareness)

….

FOCUS ON:

DARS and

self-expression

MOTIVATIONS

Classification as an instrument for:

Design process

Enhancing reutilization of code, projects etc…

Older classification of autonomic components

Sometimes outdated

No focus on adaptive capabilities, awareness

Building a general framework for self-expression

CLASSIFYING COORDINATION PATTERNS

Previous focus on:

the ensemble as a whole

Hardware capabilities of the single robot

Current trend on:

What makes a single component adaptive?

New approaches for ensemble coordination

*-Aware components

Our approach:

Try to consider, integrate and discuss all the previous

topics.

THE TREE(S) OF CONCEPTS

Two seeds:

Single component

Communication

Internal architecture

Awareness capabilities

Ensemble as a whole

Organization

Global architecture

Team features

ENSEMBLE AS A WHOLE 1/3

Organization

Structured Unstructured

Leader Peers

Role Based

Swarm

Architecture

ENSEMBLE AS A WHOLE 2/3

Deliberative Reactive (!)

Team Features

ENSEMBLE AS A WHOLE 3/3

Composition Size

Homogeneous Large Heterogeneous

Small

SINGLE COMPONENT TREE

Communication:

Direct:

Well defined protocols

Data transmission

Communication can be used for raising awareness.

Direct communication are characterized by

Bandwidth and Range.

LESS DIRECT WAYS FOR COMMUNICATING

Stigmergic approach:

Computational Fields

Virtual Pheromones

…

Sensing approach:

“Sensing” changes in the environment

Giving them different meanings according to the state in

which the unit is located

COMMUNICATION AND AWARENESS Communication is used for raising awareness of:

Events

Presence of team mates

And managing COORDINATION

What about non-communicative coordination?

Strictly related to Awareness

Social rules, conventions, common pre-shared

knowledge

See: Common Expected Payoff in [1]

[1] J.R. Kok, M.T.J. Spaan and N. Vlassis Non-communicative multi-robot

coordination in dynamic environments, in Robotics and autonomous

System, Multi-Robots in dynamic Environments, Vol. 50, Issues 2-3, 28

Feb. 2005, p. 99 - 114

CONVENTIONS, SOCIAL RULES … AWARENESS

“Imagine that you and a friend need to meet today.

You both arrived in Paris yesterday but you were

unable to get in touch to set a time and place.

Nevertheless, it is essential that you meet today.

Where will you go, and when?”

Vohra 1995 AAAI

Symposium on active learning

INTERNAL ARCHITECTURE 1/2

[2] G. Cabri, M. Puviani, and F. Zambonelli. Towards a taxonomy of adaptive

agent-based collaboration patterns for autonomic service ensembles.

2011 Collaborative Technologies and Systems, Philadelphia (USA), May 2011.

INTERNAL ARCHITECTURE 2/2 Connection with cognitive heuristics self-aware [3]

agents:

Feedback

Reasoning

Learning

Planning

Goal driven

…

[3] A. Guazzini A Cognitive Heuristic model for Local Community

Recognition Lecture at AWASS 2012, June 2012 Edinburgh, Scotland,

U.K

THE CHALLENGE OF DEFINING AWARENESS

Many previous works and classification

Many fields/case studies

Many open issues:

Evaluating

Assessing

Definition

…

LOT OF CONFUSION!

SOME EXAMPLES IN PHILOSOPHY AND ART

R. Descartes: “Cogito ergo

Sum”

V. Van Gogh

“People say - and I’m quite willing to believe it -

that it’s difficult to know oneself ...”

… AND NEUROSCIENCE

Picture taken from: http://hellbox.org/squeezebox/archives/cat_sketchbook.html

Assessing visual

Self-awareness

Assess fake-beliefs

awareness

Picture taken from

http://www.asperger-advice.com/sally-and-anne.html

PUTTING ALL TOGETHER

From many definitions and tests for

defining\evaluate awareness:

Extract what is relevant for autonomic components

Making clear distinctions when needed

Context and perception are critical when trying to

classify the degree of awareness.

The link between the three module internal architecture and the five degrees of

Self-consciuosness by Neisser et. Al[4]

[4]U. Neisser The roots of self-knowledge: Perceiving self, it, and thou in

Annals of the NY AoS., vol. 818, pp. 1933, 1997.

AWARENESS CAPABILITIES

WHAT CAN WE DO WITH THIS

CLASSIFICATION?

Find the concept of distances in patterns:

Every ensemble organization may require different

features of the trees.

A requirement may be internal or external, strong or

weak.

EXAMPLE

A Master-Slave configuration requires:

Direct communication

Be aware of other team mates

A proactive internal architecture

Heterogeneous composition

…

A Swarm configuration requires:

Stigmergy

Be aware of the environment and events

A reactive internal architecture

Homogeneous composition

…

CONCLUSION AND FUTURE WORK

Provide a conceptual map for Multi robot systems

Adaptation

Awareness

Software and Hardware features

Study how to express the concept of distances in

patterns:

Estimate the effort for dynamically change a

coordination pattern

More formal definitions

Implementing test scenarios

Model checking

THANK YOU

The work is partially supported by:

(EU FP7-FET, Contract No. 257414) www.ascens-ist.eu

(nicola.capodieci, giacomo.cabri)@unimore.it

http://agentgroup.unimo.it/