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Emergent Control

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Organic Computing — A Paradigm Shift for Complex Systems

Part of the book series: Autonomic Systems ((ASYS,volume 1))

Abstract

In order to control the dynamics of a system, feedback control (FC for short) is an extremely successful strategy, which is widely applied by engineers. Here we discuss a different strategy of control, called emergent control (EC for short), which can be found in large, distributed systems of components interacting only locally. For comparison we present a basic architecture for emergent control and two simple examples. In these examples, emergent control is achieved by a chemical computing approach. In the first example the number of objects of a particular type in a distributed system has to be kept constant. The example shows that on a macroscopic level EC and FC can display exactly the same behaviour. Hence for comparing their performance quantitatively a more refined model has to be taken into account. This model indicates a trade-off between cost and robustness. FC tends to operate at a lower cost than EC, however it also tends to instability when the system under control is large, decentralised, and/or heavily perturbed. In the second example the number of clusters in a distributed system should be controlled. The example shows how a user can “control”, i.e., provide goals in EC even if the system is not tractable analytically due to highly non-linear effects.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Bio Systems Analysis Group, Jena Centre for Bioinformatics and Department of Mathematics and Computer Science, Friedrich Schiller University Jena, 07743, Jena, Germany

    Peter Kreyssig & Peter Dittrich

Authors
  1. Peter Kreyssig
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  2. Peter Dittrich
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Correspondence to Peter Dittrich .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. , Institute for Systems Engineering, Leibniz Universität Hannover, Appelstr. 4, Hannover, 30167, Germany

    Christian Müller-Schloer

  2. , Institute AIFB, Karlsruhe Institute of Technology, Kaiserstr. 89, Karlsruhe, 76133, Germany

    Hartmut Schmeck

  3. , Department of Computer Science, Universität Augsburg, Universitätsstr. 6a, Augsburg, 86159, Germany

    Theo Ungerer

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Kreyssig, P., Dittrich, P. (2011). Emergent Control. In: Müller-Schloer, C., Schmeck, H., Ungerer, T. (eds) Organic Computing — A Paradigm Shift for Complex Systems. Autonomic Systems, vol 1. Springer, Basel. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-0348-0130-0_4

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-0348-0130-0_4

  • Publisher Name: Springer, Basel

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-0348-0129-4

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-0348-0130-0

  • eBook Packages: Computer ScienceComputer Science (R0)

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