Adaptive Software Architecture Research Articles

An Intelligent Human–Machine Interface Architecture for Long-Term Remote Robot Handling in Fusion Reactor Environments

This paper addresses the intricate challenge posed by remote handling (RH) operations in facilities with operational lifespans surpassing 30 years. The extended RH task horizon necessitates a forward-looking strategy to accommodate the continuous evolution of RH equipment. Confronted with diverse and evolving hardware interfaces, a critical requirement emerges for a flexible and adaptive software architecture based on changing situations and past experiences. The paper explores the inherent challenges associated with sustaining and upgrading RH equipment within an extended operational context. In response to this challenge, a groundbreaking, flexible, and maintainable human–machine interface (HMI) architecture named MAMIC is designed, guaranteeing seamless integration with a diverse range of RH equipment developed over the years. Embracing a modular and extensible design, the MAMIC architecture facilitates the effortless incorporation of new equipment without compromising system integrity. Moreover, by adopting this approach, nuclear facilities can proactively steer the evolution of RH equipment, guaranteeing sustained performance and compliance throughout the extended operational lifecycle. The proposed adaptive architecture provides a scalable and future-proof solution, addressing the dynamic landscape of remote handling technology for decades.

The IDEA of Us: An Identity-Aware Architecture for Autonomous Systems

Autonomous systems, such as drones and rescue robots, are increasingly used during emergencies. They deliver services and provide situational awareness that facilitate emergency management and response. To do so, they need to interact and cooperate with humans in their environment. Human behaviour is uncertain and complex, so it can be difficult to reason about it formally. In this paper, we propose IDEA: an adaptive software architecture that enables cooperation between humans and autonomous systems, by leveraging in the social identity approach. This approach establishes that group membership drives human behaviour. Identity and group membership are crucial during emergencies, as they influence cooperation among survivors. IDEA systems infer the social identity of surrounding humans, thereby establishing their group membership. By reasoning about groups, we limit the number of cooperation strategies the system needs to explore. IDEA systems select a strategy from the equilibrium analysis of game-theoretic models, that represent interactions between group members and the IDEA system. We demonstrate our approach using a search-and-rescue scenario, in which an IDEA rescue robot optimises evacuation by collaborating with survivors. Using an empirically validated agent-based model, we show that the deployment of the IDEA system can reduce median evacuation time by \(13.6\% \) .

Experiential-sensorial adaptive system model for hospitality based on 360° VR videos and case-based reasoning.

In this work, an adaptive software architecture is proposed for the generation of experiences for hotel promotion and marketing, based on Case-based Reasoning (CBR) that uses the attributes and user characteristics and immersive 360° videos. Considering that immersion in virtual reality (VR) environments can trigger responses in various dimensions, such as affective, cognitive, attitudinal, and behavioral dimensions, these dimensions are evaluated in immersive environments with 360° videos. To validate the results obtained with the software architecture, a quasi-experimental study was conducted through the evaluation of the experience, consisting in the visualization of the environments of a boutique hotel, with a sample of a randomly selected group of young people. The contribution of this work lies in the use of 360° VR videos, for the visualization of the hotel characteristics and environments according the user profiles, to evaluate the affective, cognitive and attitudinal and behavioral responses and their influence on the booking intention and attitude. Finally, conclusions and recommendations for future work have been established.

Toward an Adaptive Software Architecture for Archetype-Based Health-Care Applications

Self-adaptation gives software systems the ability to adjust their behavior or structure in changing environments such as the health software domain. However, adaptability significantly complicates software implementation and brings great challenges to software engineering.

360° Virtual Reality Video Tours Generation Model for Hostelry and Tourism based on the Analysis of User Profiles and Case-Based Reasoning

This paper proposes an adaptive software archi-tecture focused on hotel marketing based on immersive virtual reality (VRI) with 360° videos, which includes a component based on Case-Based Reasoning (CBR) to provide experiences that correspond to the analysis of user profiles. For the validation of the system, considering that the use of VR can trigger experi-ences in several dimensions, affective, attitudinal and behavioral responses, as well as the cognitive load were evaluated using visu-alizations of 2D photographs contained in hotel websites , which were compared with 360° videos in a VRI environment. To test the hypotheses, a quasi-experimental study was conducted with an independent sample group, in which subjects were randomly assigned to the two types of visualizations. The contribution of the article lies in the incorporation of marketing concepts and approaches in VRI experiences with 360° videos through virtual objects that are used by the software architecture, as well as in the proposed validation of the effectiveness of the proposal.

Assured Mission Adaptation of UAVs

The design of systems that can change their behaviour to account for scenarios that were not foreseen at design time remains an open challenge. In this article, we propose an approach for adaptation of mobile robot missions that is not constrained to a predefined set of mission evolutions. We implement an adaptive software architecture and show how controller synthesis can be used both to guarantee correct transitioning from the old to the new mission goals with runtime architectural reconfiguration to include new software actuators and sensors if necessary. The architecture brings together architectural concepts that are commonplace in robotics such as temporal planning, discrete, hybrid and continuous control layers together with architectural concepts from adaptive systems such as runtime models and runtime synthesis. We validate the architecture flying several missions taken from the robotic literature for different real and simulated UAVs.

Model-based resource analysis and synthesis of service-oriented automotive software architectures

ContextAutomotive software architectures describe distributed functionality by an interaction of software components. One drawback of today’s architectures is their strong integration into the onboard communication network based on predefined dependencies at design time. The idea is to reduce this rigid integration and technological dependencies. To this end, service-oriented architecture offers a suitable methodology since network communication is dynamically established at run-time.AimWe target to provide a methodology for analysing hardware resources and synthesising automotive service-oriented architectures based on platform-independent service models. Subsequently, we focus on transforming these models into a platform-specific architecture realisation process following AUTOSAR Adaptive.ApproachFor the platform-independent part, we apply the concepts of design space exploration and simulation to analyse and synthesise deployment configurations, i. e., mapping services to hardware resources at an early development stage. We refine these configurations to AUTOSAR Adaptive software architecture models representing the necessary input for a subsequent implementation process for the platform-specific part.ResultWe present deployment configurations that are optimal for the usage of a given set of computing resources currently under consideration for our next generation of E/E architecture. We also provide simulation results that demonstrate the ability of these configurations to meet the run time requirements. Both results helped us to decide whether a particular configuration can be implemented. As a possible software toolchain for this purpose, we finally provide a prototype.ConclusionThe use of models and their analysis are proper means to get there, but the quality and speed of development must also be considered.

JarvSis: a distributed scheduler for IoT applications

JarvSis is a distributed scheduler capable to automate the execution of multiple heterogeneous tasks on IoT and Robotics applications by means of a modular and adaptable software architecture. JarvSis is designed to accept pluggable modules that make it adaptable to any devices, from simple sensors to complex robots, that, in turn, expose remote interfaces, i.e. Web-API, MQTT or ROS message bus. Through JarvSis, the developer can easily configure and deploy hierarchies of control tasks running in the Cloud and in the Fog in order to interact and control IoT devices or robots that operate in the ground. Control tasks are organized in a hierarchical network on which Fog resources represent a bridge between the computational resources hosted in the Cloud, and IoT devices or robots operating in the "ground". In such a network, the highest layer provides control and coordination, and is typically hosted in the Cloud, while the last layer is distributed in the Fog. The advantages provided by JarvSis are discussed by a detailed example in the robotic domain.

An adaptive self-managing platform for cabin management systems

In the cabin domain, the degree of changeability is an important commercial parameter. This includes customization before initial aircraft delivery as well as in-service cabin rearrangements and upgrades. This requires a highly flexible cabin management system (CMS). Today`s CMSs face this challenge with configurable system architectures offering a vast change domain, however, the change process itself is very time consuming and error-prone. To overcome this issue our approach of an Adaptive Platform will make manual configuration widely dispensable. Thereby adaptivity means that all components of the platform’s software architecture are able to adapt to any CMS instance nearly without human intervention. Most of the system knowledge needed for this purpose, e.g., topology or communication requirements, is autonomously obtained by discovery mechanisms. The adaptive software architecture contains the following: (1) a data-centric communication middleware, (2) management services clearly separated from the application and (3) plug and play mechanisms for the integration of new application software and peripheral devices. Focus of this paper is the management service which abstracts faulty resources and coordinates global system behaviour w.r.t. aircraft’s state. As a proof of concept, an adaptive CMS demonstration system was realized. We think that the proposed architecture will increase the flexibility within the lifecycle of a CMS substantially. In addition, the contained management services raise the application’s abstraction level by disburden it from any management tasks. Further work on this topic may cover evaluation of the adaptive approach for more safety critical avionic systems or incorporate certification aspects such as automated documentation and testing.

Adaptive software architecture based on confident HCI for the deployment of sensitive services in Smart Homes.

Smart spaces foster the development of natural and appropriate forms of human-computer interaction by taking advantage of home customization. The interaction potential of the Smart Home, which is a special type of smart space, is of particular interest in fields in which the acceptance of new technologies is limited and restrictive. The integration of smart home design patterns with sensitive solutions can increase user acceptance. In this paper, we present the main challenges that have been identified in the literature for the successful deployment of sensitive services (e.g., telemedicine and assistive services) in smart spaces and a software architecture that models the functionalities of a Smart Home platform that are required to maintain and support such sensitive services. This architecture emphasizes user interaction as a key concept to facilitate the acceptance of sensitive services by end-users and utilizes activity theory to support its innovative design. The application of activity theory to the architecture eases the handling of novel concepts, such as understanding of the system by patients at home or the affordability of assistive services. Finally, we provide a proof-of-concept implementation of the architecture and compare the results with other architectures from the literature.

Interconnections of Object Management for U-healthcare Services

Enterprise Information Technology (IT) professionals have reached the practical limits of two-tier architectures. Facing growing pressure to deliver broad-reaching application functionality quickly and cost-effectively, IT departments are turning to distributed object computing as the adaptive software architecture on which to build applications that meet these challenging business requirements. Besides, as a growing number of sophisticated services are provided over the Internet, the need arises to coordinate application objects into transactions, in such a way as to enable functionality and data to be shared across applications and over multiple platforms. The distributed computing environments provide various open u-healthcare multimedia services through telecommunication information networking structure developing based on object-oriented concepts and distributed technology which can be applied new services with a few changes over the existing networks. The existing object model in distributed computing environment has the limitations of the individual object modeling and the complexity of object’s management according to large capacity of distributed applications. In this paper, we design and implement the object group model that can be functionally and efficiently managed the individual objects in a given environment for decreasing the complexity in the distributed software’s management and development for u-health care services object management. We also presents the analysis of requirements and functions required to propose the object group model for u-healthcare, and depicts the functional structure in details using its analysis. We design the interaction procedures among the components of the object group for management and service functions for our object group model. And we show procedures using interaction procedure diagrams and ETDs(Event Tracing Diagram)s. Keyword: Distributed Computing Environments, u-healthcare multimedia services, distributed software’s management, ETD (Event Tracing Diagram)

Reflective pervasive systems

Pervasive adaptive systems are concerned with the construction of “smart” technologies capable of adapting to the needs of the individual in real time. In order to achieve this level of specificity, systems must be capable of monitoring the psychological status of the user and responding to these changes in real time and across multiple systems if necessary. This article describes a number of conceptual issues associated with this category of adaptive technology. The biocybernetic loop describes different approaches to monitoring the status of the user from physiological sensors to overt behavior. These data are used to drive real time system adaptation tailored to a specific user in a particular context. The rate at which the technology adapts to the individual user are described over three different phases of usage: awareness (short-term), adjustment (medium-term), and coevolution (long-term). An ontology is then proposed for the development of an adaptive software architecture that embodies this approach and may be extended to encompass several distinct loops working in parallel. The feasibility of the approach is assessed through implemented case studies of their performance and functionality.

On Designing Self-Adaptive Software Systems

Self-adaptive systems modify themselves at run-time in order to control the satisfaction of their requirements under changing environmental conditions. Over the past century, feedback-loops have been used as important models for controlling dynamic behavior of mechanical, electrical, fluid and chemical systems in the corresponding fields of engineering. More recently, they also have been adopted for engineering self-adaptive software systems. However, obtaining sound and explicit mappings consistently between adaptive software architectures and feedback loop elements is still an open challenge. This paper, recalling a reference model proposed previously with that goal, discuss key aspects on the design of adaptive software where feedback loop elements are explicitly defined as first-class components in its software architecture. It complements this discussion with an illustration of the process to use this reference model by applying it to a plausible adaptive software example. This paper aims at providing a reference starting point to support software engineers in the process of designing self-adaptive software systems.

An adaptive Software and Systems Architecture for Driver Assistance Systems based on service orientation

State of the art automotive software systems presume a static configuration of electronic control units and software components. Assuming that future Driver Assistance Systems (DAS) will deploy dynamically changing software configurations, the authors propose an approach towards an adaptive software and systems architecture for DAS. The paper focuses on systems, which assist the driver while backing up truck and trailer combinations. These systems are characterized by a high degree of distribution as well as a high level of heterogeneity and changeability even at runtime. In order to meet these demands, the authors suggest the usage of service orientation combined with software agents. The functional units of these systems are encapsulated in services which are dynamically orchestrated by the agents whenever the system changes. This paper describes the ideas of this approach using a real world example. It also names and classifies the scenarios of re-configuration. The article concludes with a lookout on the future work within this project.

Taming Data

A challenge in systems-level investigations of the immune response is the principled integration of disparate data sets for constructing predictive models. InnateDB (Lynn et al., 2008; http://www.innatedb.ca), a publicly available, manually curated database of experimentally verified molecular interactions and pathways involved in innate immunity, is a powerful new resource that facilitates such integrative systems-level analyses.

Research on Generic Adaptive Software Architecture Style

The generic adaptive software architecture style is studied. Through the analysis of the basic characteristics of adaptive software architecture, the generic framework for adaptive software architecture is extracted. The integrated reference model of adaptive software architecture (ASA-IRM) is proposed based on multiview modelling theory. The rules of model mapping and evolution in ASA-IRM are discussed. The algorithm of model mapping consistency is proposed based on metamodelling and graph transformation theories. Finally, an integrated support environment for ASA-IRM is developed. The adaptive software architecture can be used in the development of complex software system, especially in open, networked environment.

ADAPTIVE KNOWLEDGE-BASED ACTION SELECTION ARCHITECTURE FOR MULTIPLE MOBILE ROBOTS

This paper proposes a biologically-inspired collective behaviour for a team of co-operating robots. A modification of the subsumption architecture is proposed for implementing the control of the individual robots. The paper proposes a new approach of fuzzy logic technique to enable the resolution of conflicts between contradictory behaviours within each robot. Furthermore, a novel adaptive knowledge-based software architecture has been developed that enables team of robot agents to achieve adaptive co-operative control. Simulated and real experiments have been conducted on team of mobile robots performing two proof-of-concept co-operative tasks: dynamic target tracking and box-pushing.

Derivation of markov models for effectiveness analysis of adaptable software architectures for mobile computing

Adaptable software architectures (SA) have been suggested as a viable solution for the design of distributed applications that operate in a mobile computing environment to cope with the high heterogeneity and variability of this environment. Mobile code techniques can be used to implement this kind of SA since they allow us to dynamically modify the load of the hosting nodes and the internode traffic to adapt to the resources available in the nodes and to the condition of the (often wireless) network link. However, moving code among nodes has a cost (e.g., in terms of network traffic and consumed energy for mobile nodes), so designing an adaptable SA based on mobile code techniques requires a careful analysis to determine its effectiveness from the early design stages. In this respect, our main contribution consists of a methodology, called ASAP (adaptable software architectures performance), to automatically derive, starting from a design model of a mobility-based SA, a Markov model whose solution provides insights about the most effective adaptation strategy based on code mobility in a given execution environment. We assume that the SA model is expressed using the Unified Modeling Language (UML) because of its widespread use in software design, also suggesting some extension to this formalism to better express the "mobility structure" of the application, i.e., which are the mobile components, and the possible targets of their movement.

SA 3—a tool for supporting adaptable software architecture generation for embedded systems

Adaptability is emerging as an important attribute or nonfunctional requirement (NFR) for embedded systems. Intuitively, adaptability is the ability of a software system to accommodate changes in its environment. However, in order for the embedded system to be adaptable its architecture, the first step in the development, should itself be adaptable. It will be helpful if the generation of this architecture could be automated. In this paper, we describe a tool called the Software Architecture Adaptability Assistant (SA 3) that helps generate adaptable architectures. SA 3 uses the properties of the NFR Framework, in particular its knowledge base properties, to create a catalog of various constituents of architecture such as components and connections, and then searches the catalog to find adaptable constituents for the architecture. In this paper, we describe the theory behind SA 3 and then describe the tool itself. We then demonstrate the architecture generation capability of the tool for embedded systems. We also discuss why these architectures are adaptable as well as point out directions for further improvement.

A distributed adaptable software architecture derived from a component model

Today, Information Systems (IS) are often distributed and heterogeneous. Thus, software systems become more and more complex and their evolution is difficult to manage. Our works deal with engineering of heterogeneous distributed systems based on reuse. Such systems need a distributed adaptable software architecture to be implemented. In this paper, we propose a Model Driven Architecture (MDA)-inspired approach for developing adaptable software. First, we briefly present the component paradigm in which we place our works. Then, we position our component model with regards to related works. In our component model, the interface of the component is described by the way of points of interaction. These points are used to manage different types of interactions between components. The components and the interactions make up a new core model. From our core model, we can build an application model represented by a graph of interactions allowing the integration of the reused components. We finish with the implementation of the application model, thanks to the distributed adaptable software architecture. Each part of this paper is illustrated with a concrete case, the European Aero user-friendly SIMulation-based dIstance Learning (ASIMIL) project.