Proceedings of the 2011 workshop on Organic computing

Abstract

It is our great pleasure to welcome you to the workshop Computing (OC'11) as part of the 8th International Conference on Autonomic Computing - ICAC 2011. Computing (OC) has emerged as a challenging vision for future information processing systems. OC is based on the insight that we are increasingly surrounded by large collections of autonomous systems, which are equipped with sensors and actuators, aware of their environment, communicating freely, and organizing themselves in order to perform the required actions and services. The presence of networks of intelligent systems in our environment opens fascinating application areas but, at the same time, bears the problem of their controllability. Hence, we have to construct such systems - which we increasingly depend on - to be as robust, safe, flexible, and trustworthy as possible. In particular, a strong orientation towards human needs as opposed to a pure implementation of the technologically possible is central. In order to achieve these goals, technical systems will have to act more independently, flexibly, and autonomously, i.e. they will have to exhibit life-like properties. We call those systems organic. Hence, an Organic Computing System is a technical system, which adapts dynamically to the current conditions of its environment. The vision of Computing and its fundamental concepts arose independently in different research areas like Neuroscience, Molecular Biology, and Computer Engineering. There is a strong overlap with the basic ideas of Autonomic Computing, which it extends with respect to a stronger emphasis on decentralized control and a wider range of technical applications. Central aspects of Computing systems have been and will be inspired by an analysis of information processing in biological systems. The focus of this OC workshop is, however, the technical application. The call for papers attracted many submissions and the program committee accepted 8 papers that cover a variety of topics including sensor networks, robotics and embedded systems. In addition, the program includes a keynote speech by Prof. Yaochu Jin on Morphogenetic Self-Organization of Collective Systems.