Pollination - A Biologically Inspired Paradigm for Self-Managing Systems

Journal of International Transactions on Systems Science and Applications, Volume 2, Number 2, 2006, pp. 147-156

From the biology's point of view, pollination is an important step in the reproduction of seed plants. From the software engineer's view, pollination may evolve to a promising, biologically inspired paradigm for future, self-managing computing systems. This estimation is based on the self-* properties implied inherently by the pollination process between plants and insects. To exploit these characteristics for artificial, self-managing systems, this paper analyzes the components and sub-processes involved in the natural pollination process and identifies the emerging self-* properties. Based on that, the paper adapts this process by a formal specification for artificial pollination systems as well as a meta-model of their system architecture. The paper illustrates the adaptation's benefits by a case study and evaluates its capabilities and limitations. Finally, it presents open issues and an outlook on future work.

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