Towards Self-organising Time-sensitive Control System's Software

Abstract The embedded computer applications are rapidly growing in numbers, in complexity, and in dependability. This trend has been accompanied by shift of systems building paradigm from individual algorithms to interacting computing entities (e.g. agents, components, modules, etc). A number of studies focus on self-organising capabilities of such entities (agents). Unfortunately for computer control systems, many essential issues - such as, forced con currency, time awareness of theories and software, and some others - have been almost neglected in the conventional theory. This paper provides a superficial survey of evolution of software-intensive systems towards multiagent systems, lists subjectively some basic problems and achievements in developing time-critical systems. The authors suggest that sufficiently good theoretical and practical basis exists for building a test-bed that would assist in merging recent development trends in software engineering and artificial intelligence, and enable verification of time correctness of agent interaction. The test-bed would also assist in developing a theory for quantitative assessment of some properties of the evolving structures, and enable step-wise extension and testing of the supported functions (as the theoretical basis develops).