Interdisciplinary research: roles for self-organization

• Published in: IEEE intelligent systems Vol. 21; no. 2; pp. 50 - 58
• Main Authors: Nagpal, R., Zambonelli, F., Sirer, E.G., Chaouchi, H., Smirnov, M.
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: New York, NY IEEE 01-03-2006; IEEE Computer Society
• Subjects: adaptation; adaptive structures; amorphous computing; Amorphous materials; Applied sciences; automation; autonomic communication; Communities; Computation; Computer languages; Computer science; control theory; systems; Control systems; Control theory. Systems; Design engineering; distributed systems; Exact sciences and technology; Guidelines; Jacobian matrices; Mobile robots; Pi control; Pictures; Proportional control; reconfiguration; resource management; resource optimization; Robotics; self-adaptive systems; self-management; self-organization; Shape; Technical papers; Performance evaluation; Coordination; Moving robot; Information system; Distributed system; Real time; Adaptive method; Optimization; Amorphous computation; Self organization; Mechanism synthesis; Heuristic method; Multidisciplinary
• ISSN: 1541-1672; 1941-1294
• DOI: 10.1109/MIS.2006.30

No generally accepted principles and guidelines currently exist to help engineers design local interaction mechanisms that result in a desired global behavior. However, several communities have developed ways of approaching this problem in the context of niched application areas. Because the ideas underlying these approaches are often obscured or underemphasized in technical papers, the authors review the role of self-organization in their work. They provide a better picture of the status of the emerging field of self-organizing systems or autonomic computing.