Keynote: Autonomous and Autonomic Systems: Paradigm for Engineering Effective Computer-Based Systems

The Autonomous and Autonomic Systems initiative has as its vision the creation of self-directed and self managing systems to address today’s concerns ofcomplexity and total cost of ownership while meetingtomorrow’s needs for pervasive and ubiquitouscomputation and communication.The future of computing and communications isbeing researched under many areas; including gridcomputing, utility computing, pervasive computing,ubiquitous computing, invisible computing, worldcomputing, ambient intelligence, ambient networksand so on…The driving force behind these future paradigmsof computer-based systems is the increasingconvergence between proliferation of devices,wireless networking, and mobile software.Weiser first described what has become known asubiquitous computing as the move away from the“dramatic” machine, where hardware andsoftware’s focus was on being so exciting that we asusers would not want to be without it, towardsmaking the machine “invisible”, so embedded in ourlives it is used without thinking or recognising it ascomputing.Behind these different terms and research areas,lie three key properties: nomadic, embedded andinvisible. In effect, leading to, the creation of asingle system with (potentially) billions of networkedinformation devices and resulting in a ComplexityQuagmire?As such, the case can be made that all of the nextgeneration paradigms, in one form or another, willrequire an autonomic–self-managing–infrastructureto be able to provide the successful reality of thisenvisaged level of pervasiveness, invisibility andmobility.This talk reports on research and development,with examples from Biometric Identification andTracking Systems, Autonomic Communications, andSpace Exploration Systems, utilizing the biologicalmetaphor of the autonomic nervous system tocomputing and communications, in which computerbasedsystems self-regulate by using automaticreactions to defend, optimize and heal.