FlashMob: distributed adaptive self-assembly

Abstract

Autonomous systems need to support dynamic software adaptation in order to handle the complexity and unpredictability of the execution environment, and the changing needs of the end user. Although a number of approaches have been proposed, few address a key issue: that of distribution. In this paper we seek to overcome the limitations of centralised approaches. We build on our previous work on adaptive self-assembly within the three-layer model for autonomous systems to provide a decentralised technique for self-assembly. To achieve this in a fault-tolerant and scalable manner, we use a gossip protocol as a basis. While no central or leader node is aware of the full space of solutions, gossip ensures that agreement on a particular solution - in this case a component configuration - is reached in a logarithmic number of steps with respect to the size of the network.