Keep it SIMPLEX: satisfying multiple goals with guarantees in control-based self-adaptive systems

An increasingly important concern of software engineers is handling uncertainties at design time, such as environment dynamics that may be difficult to predict or requirements that may change during operation. The idea of self-adaptation is to handle such uncertainties at runtime, when the knowledge becomes available. As more systems with strict requirements require self-adaptation, providing guarantees for adaptation has become a high-priority. Providing such guarantees with traditional architecture-based approaches has shown to be challenging. In response, researchers have studied the application of control theory to realize self-adaptation. However, existing control-theoretic approaches applied to adapt software systems have primarily focused on satisfying only a single adaptation goal at a time, which is often too restrictive for real applications. In this paper, we present Simplex Control Adaptation, SimCA, a new approach to self-adaptation that satisfies multiple goals, while being optimal with respect to an additional goal. SimCA offers robustness to measurement inaccuracy and environmental disturbances, and provides guarantees. We evaluate SimCA for two systems with strict requirements that have to deal with uncertainties: an underwater vehicle system used for oceanic surveillance, and a tele-assistance system for health care support.