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The DReAM framework for dynamic reconfigurable architecture modelling: theory and applications

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Abstract

Modern systems evolve in unpredictable environments and have to continuously adapt their behaviour to changing conditions. The “DReAM” (Dynamic Reconfigurable Architecture Modelling) framework has been designed for modelling reconfigurable dynamic systems. It provides a rule-based language, inspired from Interaction Logic, which is expressive and easy to use encompassing all aspects of dynamicity including parametric multi-modal coordination with creation/deletion of components as well as mobility. Additionally, it allows the description of both endogenous/modular and exogenous/centralized coordination styles and sound transformations from one style to the other. The DReAM framework is implemented in the form of a Java API bundled with an execution engine. It allows us to develop runnable systems combining the expressiveness of the rule-based notation together with the flexibility of this widespread programming language.

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Notes

  1. For the sake of conciseness, from now on we will omit the conjunction operator on monomials.

  2. Notice that when writing, e.g. c.s, we are omitting the explicit reference to the component type b and using a shorter notation compared to the complete one, e.g. b.c.s.

  3. Notice that if the direction of a robot is updated at a given time, the robot will move according to this new direction only during the next clock cycle because of the adopted snapshot semantics.

  4. Since all robots synchronize on the same “clock”, many of them might update their respective directions differently at the same time: adding the “tiebreaker” on the instance identifier when timestamps are equal allows data exchange even in these cases.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. IMT School for Advanced Studies Lucca, Lucca, Italy

    Rocco De Nicola & Alessandro Maggi

  2. Université Grenoble Alpes, Grenoble, France

    Joseph Sifakis

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  1. Rocco De Nicola
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  2. Alessandro Maggi
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  3. Joseph Sifakis
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Correspondence to Alessandro Maggi.

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De Nicola, R., Maggi, A. & Sifakis, J. The DReAM framework for dynamic reconfigurable architecture modelling: theory and applications. Int J Softw Tools Technol Transfer 22, 437–455 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10009-020-00555-2

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