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Abstract:
The world of pervasive computing is almost upon us. This world will contain
an unimaginable number of devices that are highly heterogeneous with respect
to their capabilities such as processing, storage and communication. The
demands placed upon pervasive computing networks will vary with the changing
needs of users, and the resources available will vary as devices come
online or go offline. This will lead to complexity on an immense scale
and which the current infrastructure is incapable of supporting. In order
to use the network of pervasive computing devices effectively, it is necessary
that it can seamlessly deliver services to users despite dynamic changes
in demand or resource availability. Desirable system attributes and behaviors
include: self-configuring devices, adaptation to changing conditions,
decentralized (locally negotiated) solutions, and intrinsic robustness
to failure conditions.
BTexact
has for several years been carrying out research which is tackling these
issues. Systems in Nature are characterized by their decentralized architectures
and complex heterogeneous constituent parts, as well as their adaptability
to changing environments. Nature can consequently be used as a rich source
of inspiration for solutions to engineering problems. In this talk, I
will summarize this approach and give several examples of where Nature
Inspired ideas have helped to develop self-organizing, adaptive, and scalable
solutions to complex, dynamic engineering and networking problems.
Mark Shackleton graduated from Sheffield University (UK) in 1986 with
a BSc (Hons, Class I) in Computer Science. He first worked for Singer
Link-Miles, manufacturers of commercial flight simulators, developing
real-time 3D computer graphics algorithms and systems. He joined the
Image Processing and Computer Vision research group at BT (British Telecommunications)
in 1989. In this group, he designed and implemented a number of systems
in areas such as automatic face recognition, model-based coding, and
content retrieval from images and video sequences. During this period,
he spent time seconded to MIT Media Laboratory working closely alongside
researchers there. In 1996 he moved across to the Future Technologies
Group, now part of the Intelligent Systems Laboratory, BTexact, at Adastral
Park. He now leads this group whose remit is to develop novel solutions
to problems using nature-inspired algorithms and approaches. Mark is
Project Manager of BTexact’s Pervasive Computing research program which
is seeking to address the issues of complexity inherent in the next
generation of large-scale, complex, dynamic networks of computational
devices.
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