“Autonomic Computer Systems and their potential application

to Road Network Management”

Lee McCluskeyDept of Informatics

Future / current problem with complexity of systems

jpeg from an address to “The 3rd IEEE International Conference on Autonomic Computing” by David Bartlett

Future / current problem with complexity of systems

• As (computer) systems are getting more complex, they are getting much harder to manage, in particular to ..– Maintain– Fix– Configure / Re-configure– Secure

Initial requirements drift, environments change.

Autonomic Nervous Systems

• Human breathing, heartbeat, temperature, immune system, repair mechanisms are all to a great extent controlled by our body without our conscious management

• When we are anxious, frightened, ill, injured etc all these bodily functions have evolved to react appropriately.

Autonomic Computing

• Apparently the term was coined by IBM in 2001, now there is an international conference (“ICAC” 2004,5,6,7)

• AC/ICAC have attracted a very wide range of computing research and approaches, largely from the artificial intelligence community

• Aim to make complex systems self-managing, ie– Self healing– Self maintaining– Self configuring

and thus deal with the problems outlined above. • Up until recently, research into individual autonomic

properties was tackled piecemeal. Some systems (eg computer operating systems ..) have some elements of these features already

Capabilities required for ACThe computer system may needs to be able to: • Self-Evaluate: detect and identify problems (security

breaches, SLA shortfalls, bugs)• Learn: tune, auto-debug, change code, seek new

knowledge / services when required• Plan: creating strategies/schedules for dealing with

problemsThese generally require the system to have an explicit set

of requirements /SLAs (so can evaluate) and the semantics of components of the system

A web approach to AC ..

Nowadays the field of SOA emphasises the idea of putting components together to create systems .. EG

• Systems are made up of compositions of web services• Web services are marked up with semantics (eg using

OWL-S)• Requirements are like ‘goals’ that compositions of web

services must achieve, they are configured automatically by automated planning programs

• As new services come on stream, or services are unavailable, or are retired, self-maintenance means replacing old with new but equivalent semantics.

• If more than evolution is required, self-configuration is down to re-planning, where a new solution is constructed from primitive web services.

(cf PhD student Faisal Mustafa who is looking into this)

A lot my research has really been AC!

See my website http://scom.hud.ac.uk/scomtlm/ for detailsFAROAS 1992-4 Create formalisation of functional requirements (the CPS),

automate the solution / code writing – code “self-maintenance”

IMPRESS 1996-9Use “training data” to test the CPS-generated code,

learning processes both find the requirements that are to blame for errors, and invent a requirements fix to satisfy the training data. A new program is automatically derived – auto-bug fixing and “self-learning”

PLANFORM 2000-3 Produce platform to ease the process of automated

planning – “self-management”

AC application: Road Network Management

• Complex data gathering, knowledge extraction, planning and control application

• Critical to congestion control, incident management, road use optimisation

Road Network Management

many systems for data gathering (various types of traffic detectors, cctv)

many ways to influence and control: traffic lights, variable speed limits, variable message signs, local radio, satnav (near future?)

System control involves forming and executing a strategy to control and hence optimise the network

Road Network Management: Current Situation

Main problems:- Road management experts scarce- Many different systems, not interoperable- Systems for different areas (HA,Urban)- Usual problems of maintenance, configuration- Road management experts scarceHowever:Data services becoming standardisedRoad strategies semi-formalisedSome ‘intelligent’ systems exist but on a small

scale

A Solution with AC properties

Available DataServices

Real Time Network Information

heal, repair

Declarative Description ofPlan OutlinesPoliciesRequirementsNetwork Characteristics andGeometries Actions – Network AffectingActions – Info Gatheringmanage

ROADNETWORK

Domain Model

RNMS

configure

maintain

‘plug-in’servicesemantics

Plan construction, plan tuning

learn

Autonomic Properties

Persistent Knowledge

Transient Knowledge

Road Network Management: Some of the functions of our AC approach

- Self–healing/ repairing: (Information fusion)

- Self-management (of the Road Network)

- Self-maintenance (of Domain Model eg when a new road is inserted, or a new service becomes available)

- Self-configuration (eg new Road Network)

Road Network Management: Some of the benefits of our AC approach

- Enforce an application-independent declarative semantics for plans, policies, network geometries, information services etc. Service providers can ‘plug-in’ to this, and new services can be ‘plugged-in’..

- A great deal of s/w maintenance will amount to knowledge editing

- Planners and solvers will improve automatically as the knowledge/services available improves

- Real time information will rely on a minimum of network sensors

More detailed system architecture

Summary

- Computer systems are becoming too complex to manage efficiently

- AC brings together R and D into giving (computer) systems self management properties - using AI techniques such as planning and learning

- We have identified an application which AC would benefit- Self management of the overall system- Self maintenance, configuration, and repair of

some of the embedded system components