Degrees of Intimacy in SiSSy Systems "How to Join a Team"

Abstract

In this paper, we describe a notion of participation that allows a system to join an existing system of systems ("team" in this paper) gradually, from a very superficial interaction that does not require much adjustment to a much more detailed sharing of the semantics between the system and the team. The point is to provide a very low initial entry cost for the system, so it can be encouraged to cooperate and expand its participation because the more it shares, the more services it receives. The key is to concentrate on the notion of communication for cooperation, which leads to deep consideration of the semantics of representation languages, for system structure and behavior, and for interaction among systems and teams and their goals. This in turn provides a ready scale by which systems can manage their participation in, and deepen their engagement with, other teams of cooperating systems.