
An autonomous decentralized system (or ADS) is a
decentralized system
A decentralised system in systems theory is a system in which lower level components operate on local information to accomplish global goals. The global pattern of behaviour is an emergent property of dynamical mechanisms that act upon local c ...
composed of modules or components that are designed to operate independently but are capable of interacting with each other to meet the overall goal of the system. This design paradigm enables the system to continue to function in the event of component failures. It also enables maintenance and repair to be carried out while the system remains operational. Autonomous decentralized systems have a number of applications including industrial
production line
A production line is a set of sequential operations established in a factory where components are assembled to make a finished article or where materials are put through a refining process to produce an end-product that is suitable for onward c ...
s,
railway signalling
Railway signalling (), also called railroad signaling (), is a system used to control the movement of railway traffic. Trains move on fixed rails, making them uniquely susceptible to collision. This susceptibility is exacerbated by the enor ...
and robotics.
The ADS has been recently expanded from control applications to service application and embedded systems, thus autonomous decentralized service systems and autonomous decentralized device systems.
History
Autonomous decentralized systems were first proposed in 1977.
ADS received significant attention as such systems have been deployed in Japanese railway systems for many years safely with over 7 billion trips, proving the value of this concept. Japan railway with ADS is considered as a smart train as it also learns.
To recognizing this outstanding contribution, Dr. Kinji Mori has received numerous awards including 2013 IEEE Life Fellow, 2012 Distinguished Service Award, Tokyo Metropolitan Government, 2012 Distinguished Specialist among 1000 in the world, Chinese Government, 2008 IEICE Fellow, 1995 IEEE Fellow 1994 Research and Development Award of Excellence Achievers, Science and Technology Agency, 1994 Ichimura Industrial Prize, 1992 Technology Achievement Award, Society of Instrument and Control Engineers, 1988 National Patent Award, Science and Technology Agency, and 1988 Mainichi Technology Prize of Excellence. Dr. Mori donated the cash from Ichimura Industrial Price to IEEE to fund the IEEE Kanai Award.
Since 1977, ADS has been a subject of research by many researchers in the world including US, Japan, EU particularly Germany, and China.
ADS architecture
An ADS is a
decoupled architecture where each component or subsystem communicates by
message passing
In computer science, message passing is a technique for invoking behavior (i.e., running a program) on a computer. The invoking program sends a message to a process (which may be an actor or object) and relies on that process and its supporti ...
using shared data fields. A unique feature of the ADS is that there is no central operating system or coordinator. Instead each subsystem manages its own functionality and its coordination with other subsystems. When a subsystem needs to interact with other subsystems it broadcasts the shared data fields containing the request to all other subsystems. This broadcast does not include the identification or address of any other subsystem. Rather the other subsystems will, depending on their purpose and function, receive the broadcast message and make their own determination on what action (if any) to take.
As ADS moves into the service-oriented architecture (SOA) or ADSS (Autonomous Decentralized Service System), the data transmission can be carried out by ESB (Enterprise Service Bus), and each agent can a service that receives data from the ESB and acts according to the service specification. The results are again transmitted by the ESB to other autonomous agents.
An ADS is also similar to a
blackboard system
A blackboard system is an artificial intelligence approach based on the blackboard architectural model, where a common knowledge base, the "blackboard", is iteratively updated by a diverse group of specialist knowledge sources, starting with a pro ...
used in AI where a collection of agents will act upon seeing any data change in the common blackboard.
An ADS may include human in the loop, with both human and autonomous agents both co-learn at the same time to perform the system functionality.
Cloud computing
Cloud computing is the on-demand availability of computer system resources, especially data storage ( cloud storage) and computing power, without direct active management by the user. Large clouds often have functions distributed over m ...
also uses autonomous computing, but its architecture and framework are different from ADS.
Applications
One application of ADS is software testing, particularly combinatorial testing. A framework has been proposed based on ADS for concurrent combinatorial testing using AR and TA.
Conferences
IEEE International Symposium on Autonomous Decentralized Systems (ISADS) is the major conference on this topic. The Symposium is a biannual event and the first Symposium was held in 1993.
* ISADS 1993: March 30 – April 1, 1993, in Kawasaki, Japan
* ISADS 1995: April 25–27, 1995, Phoenix, Arizona, U.S.
* ISADS 1997: April 9–11, 1997, Berlin, Germany
* ISADS 1999: March 20–23, 1999, Tokyo, Japan
* ISADS 2001: March 26–28, 2001, Dallas, Texas, U.S.
* ISADS 2003: April 9–11, 2003, Pisa, Italy
* ISADS 2005: April 4–8, 2005, Chengdu, China
* ISADS 2007: March 21–23, 2007, Sedona, Arizona, U.S.
* ISADS 2009: March 23–25, 2009, Athens, Greece
* ISADS 2011: June 29 – July 1, 2011, Kobe, Japan
* ISADS 2013: March 6–8, 2013, Mexico City, Mexico
* ISADS 2015: March 25–27, 2015, Taichung, Taiwan
References
[Wei-Tek Tsai, Charles J. Colbourn, Jie Luo, Guanqiu Qi, Qingyang Li, Xiaoying Bai, "Test Algebra for Combinatorial Testing" 8th IEEE International Workshop on Automation of Software Test (AST2013), May 18–19, 2013, San Francisco, CA, USA]
{{Reflist
See also
*
ATOS
Atos is a European Multinational corporation, multinational information technology (IT) service (economics), service and consulting company headquartered in Bezons, France and offices worldwide. It specialises in hi-tech transactional services ...
*
Blackboard system
A blackboard system is an artificial intelligence approach based on the blackboard architectural model, where a common knowledge base, the "blackboard", is iteratively updated by a diverse group of specialist knowledge sources, starting with a pro ...
*
Peer-to-peer
Peer-to-peer (P2P) computing or networking is a distributed application architecture that partitions tasks or workloads between peers. Peers are equally privileged, equipotent participants in the network. They are said to form a peer-to-peer ...
*
Robot as a Service
*
Service-oriented architecture
In software engineering, service-oriented architecture (SOA) is an architectural style that focuses on discrete services instead of a monolithic design. By consequence, it is also applied in the field of software design where services are provided ...
Computer architecture