The categorical framework of open systems

Abstract

One of the major challenges facing today's computer scientists is developing a computer system for an autonomous mobile robot which constantly interacts with its environment, updates its knowledge based including the world model, and carries out tasks specified by humans. This kind of computer system, which is capable of updating its database dynamically and grows along with new components without damaging its integrity, is called an open system. Due to the massive influx of input data the system has to perform computations concurrently. And also human users should be able to interact with the system in the object-oriented fashion. Hence an open system can be described as an object-oriented concurrent system which can accommodate new components. The most fundamental elements of the open system are objects and processes: an object is a human-oriented concept in that humans think of the real world in terms of objects, whereas a process is machine-oriented. A category is introduced as the mathematical model for the system, and objects and processes are precisely defined in the categorical framework.<>