CORTEX: CO-operating Real-time senTient objects: architecture and EXperimental evaluation

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http://cortex.di.fc.ul.pt/

• Research Line(s): Timeliness and Adaptation in Dependable Systems (TADS)
• Sponsor: European Commission - IST Programme
• Project Number: IST-2000-26031
• Total award amount: 2.09M Euros
• Coordinator: FCUL
• Partners: FCUL, T.C.D., Univ. Lancaster, Univ. Ulm
• Start Date: Apr. 2001
• Duration: 36 months
• Keywords: Large-Scale Distributed Systems, Mobility, Proactive applications, Time and Safety Critical systems, Sentient objects
• Team at FCUL: 4 researchers, including Paulo Verissimo, António Casimiro

We are now at the point where the emergence of a new class of applications that operate independently of direct human control can be envisaged. Future mission-critical computer systems will be comprised of networked components that will act autonomously in responding to a myriad of inputs to affect and control the surrounding environment. Key characteristics of these applications include sentience, autonomy, large scale, time and safety criticality, geographical dispersion, mobility and evolution. The key objective of CORTEX is to explore the fundamental theoretical and engineering issues necessary to support the use of sentient objects to construct large-scale proactive applications and thereby to validate the use of sentient objects as a viable approach to the construction of such applications.

Aims

The proposed project will undertake:

1. Design of a programming model that supports the development of applications constructed from mobile sentient objects. The model needs to take into account the provision of incremental real-time and reliability guarantees. This will encompass:
   • development of means to express QoS properties in the model, where QoS is taken as a metric of predictability in terms of timeliness and reliability;
   • development of a global model for QoS assurance.
2. Design of an open, scalable system architecture that reflects the heterogeneous structure and performance of the networks used to support the programming model. This will entail:
   • defining adequate abstract network models and providing mappings for the various network types envisaged, ranging from controller area networks (CAN); through Local Area Networks (LAN); to Wide Area Networks (WAN), especially those based on wireless communications technologies.
   • recognising the hierarchical structure of the network topology. The basis for the proposed CORTEX architecture is to model the underlying communication infrastructure as a hierarchically structured WAN-of-CANs, i.e., an internetwork whose subnetworks will typically be CANs providing strong timing behaviour, that are interconnected by means of LANs and WANs providing weaker timing guarantees. Individual networks can be viewed as QoS containers within which given QoS degrees can be enforced. The WAN-to-CAN interface is captured in an architectural device that we call a gateway;
   • prototyping middleware able to support the model in the envisaged architecture by providing the protocols and services required to support the desired functional and non-functional properties of sentient objects.
3. Evaluation of the previous results by means of one or more demonstrators that will allow the technology to be assessed.

Approach and Methods

The CORTEX project is divided into four technical work packages and three other work packages specifically devoted to project management, assessment and dissemination of the results. Upstream is the programming model definition (WP1), which is then refined by concurrently addressing the interaction model and the adequate system architecture (WP2 and WP3), including the necessary middleware services. The demonstrator (WP4) will consolidate the results of the previous work packages, and provide a final evaluation of the project's findings. Due to the nature of this project, specifically oriented to advanced research on new technologies and paradigms, the work will progress accordingly to a spiral methodology, where results are cyclically improved and refined. Therefore, during the course of the project we plan to produce intermediate deliverables with preliminary definitions and specifications, not necessarily coinciding with the end of particular tasks. The other three work packages are obviously outside of this production cycle, at least in the early stages, since they are not concerned with conceptual problems.

Publications

• Pedro Martins, Paulo Sousa, António Casimiro, Paulo Verissimo, “A New Programming Model for Dependable Adaptive Real-Time Applications”, IEEE Distributed Systems Online, vol. 6, no. 5, 2005., May 2005.

• Pedro Martins, Paulo Sousa, António Casimiro, Paulo Verissimo, “Dependable Adaptive Real-Time Applications in Wormhole-based Systems”, in Proceedings of the International Conference on Dependable Systems and Networks (DSN'04), Florence, Italy, June 2004, Jul. 2004.

• António Casimiro, Jörg Kaiser, Paulo Verissimo, “An Architectural Framework and a Middleware for Cooperating Smart Components”, in Proceedings of the First Conference on Computing Frontiers, Ischia, Italy, April 2004, Apr. 2004.

• Paulo Verissimo, Jörg Kaiser, António Casimiro, “An architecture to support interaction via Generic Events”, in 24th IEEE Real-time Systems Symposium, Work in Progress Proceedings, Cancun, Mexico, December 2003, Dec. 2003.

• G. Blair, K. Cheverst, H. Duran-Limon, A. Friday, G. Samartzidis, T. Sivaharan, Paulo Sousa, M. Wu, “Analysis and Design of Application Scenarios”, Missing institution, Tech. Rep., May 2003. Technical Report DI/FCUL TR-03-21, Department of Computer Science, University of Lisbon. July 2003

• V. Cahill, António Casimiro, Jörg Kaiser, Pedro Martins, V. Reynolds, Paulo Sousa, Paulo Verissimo, M. Wu, “Proof-of-concept prototypes”, Missing institution, Tech. Rep., Apr. 2003. Technical Report DI/FCUL TR-03-20, Department of Computer Science, University of Lisbon. July 2003

• G. Biegel, G. Blair, C. Brudna, V. Cahill, António Casimiro, S. Clarke, H. Duran-Limon, A. Fitzpatrick, A. Friday, B. Hughes, Jörg Kaiser, R. Meier, V. Reynolds, Paulo Verissimo, M. Wu, “The CORTEX Programming Model”, Missing institution, Tech. Rep., Apr. 2003. Technical Report DI/FCUL TR-03-19, Department of Computer Science, University of Lisbon. July 2003

• G. Blair, C. Brudna, V. Cahill, António Casimiro, R. Cunningham, H. Duran-Limon, Jörg Kaiser, Pedro Martins, Paulo Verissimo, “Preliminary Specification of Basic Services and Protocols”, Missing institution, Tech. Rep., Feb. 2003. Technical Report DI/FCUL TR-03-18, Department of Computer Science, University of Lisbon. July 2003

• Paulo Verissimo, “Uncertainty and Predictability: Can they be reconciled?”, in Future Directions in Distributed Computing, pp. 108-113, Springer Verlag LNCS 2584, May, 2003, Jan. 2003.

• Paulo Verissimo, António Casimiro, “Event-Driven Support of Real-Time Sentient Objects”, in Proceedings of the Eighth IEEE International Workshop on Object-oriented Real-time Dependable Systems (WORDS 2003), Guadalajara, Mexico, Jan 2003, Jan. 2003.

• Paulo Sousa, Paulo Verissimo, “Towards a cooperating autonomous car”, in Proceedings of the 7th CaberNet Radicals Workshop, Bertinoro, Italy, Oct 2002, Oct. 2002.

• Pedro Martins, Paulo Verissimo, “The Timely Computing Base and its Future Trends”, in Proceedings of the 7th CaberNet Radicals Workshop, Bertinoro, Italy, Oct. 2002., Oct. 2002.

• Paulo Verissimo, António Casimiro, “The Timely Computing Base Model and Architecture”, IEEE Transactions on Computers - Special Issue on Asynchronous Real-Time Systems, vol. 51, n. 8, Aug 2002, Aug. 2002.

• António Casimiro, Paulo Verissimo, “Generic Timing Fault Tolerance using a Timely Computing Base”, in Proceedings of the International Conference on Dependable Systems and Networks, Washington D.C., USA, June 2002, Jun. 2002.

• C. Brudna, V. Cahill, António Casimiro, R. Cunningham, Jörg Kaiser, R. Meier, Paulo Verissimo, “Preliminary definition of CORTEX system architecture”, Missing institution, Tech. Rep., Apr. 2002. Technical Report DI/FCUL TR-03-17, Department of Computer Science, University of Lisbon. July 2003

• P. Barron, G. Biegel, V. Cahill, António Casimiro, S. Clarke, R. Cunningham, A. Fitzpatrick, G. Gaertner, B. Hughes, Jörg Kaiser, R. Meier, Paulo Verissimo, “Preliminary definition of CORTEX programming model”, Missing institution, Tech. Rep., Mar. 2002. Technical Report DI/FCUL TR-03-15, Department of Computer Science, University of Lisbon. July 2003

• G. Biegel, C. Brudna, António Casimiro, Jörg Kaiser, C. Liu, C. Mitidieri, Paulo Verissimo, “Preliminary definition of CORTEX interaction model”, Missing institution, Tech. Rep., Mar. 2002. Technical Report DI/FCUL TR-03-16, Department of Computer Science, University of Lisbon. July 2003

• Paulo Verissimo, V. Cahill, António Casimiro, K. Cheverst, A. Friday, Jörg Kaiser, “CORTEX: Towards Supporting Autonomous and Cooperating Sentient Objects”, Missing institution, Tech. Rep., Feb. 2002. Technical Report DI/FCUL TR-02-1, Department of Computer Science, University of Lisbon. Feb 2002

• Paulo Verissimo, V. Cahill, António Casimiro, K. Cheverst, A. Friday, Jörg Kaiser, “CORTEX: Towards Supporting Autonomous and Cooperating Sentient Entities”, in Proceedings of European Wireless 2002, Florence, Italy, February 2002, Feb. 2002.

• António Casimiro, Miguel Correia, “Recent Advances on the Timely Computing Base Model”, in Fast Abstract at the International Conference on Dependable Systems and Networks, Jan. 2002.

• António Casimiro, Pedro Martins, Paulo Verissimo, Luís Rodrigues, “Measuring Distributed Durations with Stable Errors”, in Proceedings of the 22nd IEEE Real-Time Systems Symposium, London, UK, December 2001, Dec. 2001.

• G. Biegel, G. Blair, V. Cahill, António Casimiro, K. Cheverst, R. Cunningham, A. Fitzpatrick, A. Friday, G. Gaertner, B. Hughes, Jörg Kaiser, R. Meier, N. Riejers, Paulo Verissimo, “Definition of Application Scenarios”, Missing institution, Tech. Rep., Oct. 2001. Technical Report DI/FCUL TR-03-14, Department of Computer Science, University of Lisbon. July 2003

• António Casimiro, Paulo Verissimo, “Using the Timely Computing Base for Dependable QoS Adaptation”, in Proceedings of the 20th IEEE Symposium on Reliable Distributed Systems, New Orleans, USA, October 2001, Oct. 2001.

• Paulo Verissimo, António Casimiro, “The Timely Computing Base”, Missing institution, Tech. Rep., May 1999. Technical Report DI/FCUL TR-99-2, Department of Informatics, University of Lisboa, May 1999

• António Casimiro, Paulo Verissimo, “Timing Failure Detection with a Timely Computing Base”, in 3rd European Research Seminar on Advances in Distributed Systems (ERSADS'99), Madeira Island, Portugal, April 23-28, 1999, Apr. 1999.

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