Giorgio and Viroli Audrito

Computational fields have been proposed as an effective abstraction to fill the gap between the macro-level of distributed systems (specifying a system’s collective behaviour) and the micro-level (individual devices’ actions of computation and interaction to implement that collective specification), thereby providing a basis to better facilitate the engineering of collective APIs and complex systems at higher levels of abstraction. This approach is particularly suited to complex large-scale distributed systems, like the Internet-of-Things and Cyber-Physical Systems, where new mechanisms are needed to address composability and reusability of collective adaptive behaviour. This work introduces a full formal foundation for field computations, in terms of a core calculus equipped with typing, denotational, and operational semantics. Critically, we apply techniques for formal programming languages to collective adaptive systems: we provide formal establishment of a link between the micro- and macro-levels of collective adaptive systems, via a result of computational adequacy and abstraction for the (aggregate) denotational semantics with respect to the (per-device) operational semantics.

Formal Techniques for Distributed Objects, Components, and Systems, Lecture Notes in Computer Science 11535, pages 289--292, 2019.
Jorge A. P{'{e}}rez, Nobuko Yoshida (eds.), Springer

@inproceedings{AVDPB-FORTE2019,
  author    = {Audrito, Giorgio and
               Viroli, Mirko and
               Damiani, Ferruccio and
               Pianini, Danilo and
               Beal, Jacob},
  title     = {On a Higher-Order Calculus of Computational Fields},
  booktitle = {Formal Techniques for Distributed Objects, Components, and Systems
               - 39th {IFIP} {WG} 6.1 International Conference, {FORTE} 2019, Held
               as Part of the 14th International Federated Conference on Distributed
               Computing Techniques, DisCoTec 2019, Kongens Lyngby, Denmark, June
               17-21, 2019, Proceedings},
  pages     = {289--292},
  year      = {2019},
  publisher = {Springer},
  url       = {https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-21759-4\_17},
  doi       = {10.1007/978-3-030-21759-4\_17},
  editor    = {P{\'{e}}rez, Jorge A. and
               Yoshida, Nobuko},
  series    = {Lecture Notes in Computer Science},
  volume    = {11535},
  isbn      = {978-3-030-21758-7},
}