CHEMICO

Current computer systems consist of heterogeneous hard- and software elements with nebulous communication structures arranged in arcane system architectures. The administration of these complex systems by humans already today is time-consuming and error-prone, causing increasingly high operational expenditues for companies. The predicated characterisitcs of future systems, such as vast quantities of distributed system elements, context-awareness, openness, and locality, furthermore enhance the management complexity. Thus, the objectives of the CHEMICO (Infochemical-based Coordination) project are to reduce the management complexity and costs by designing distributed systems with a high degree of autonomy, in which system elements organize their actions and interactions themselves by utilizing emergent effects. The essential key thereby is the capability of effective but efficient decentralized coordination. Therefore, in this project we investigate the general principles behind infochemical coordination, which is the most universally employed coordination model in nature with a plethora of inspiring examples, and adapt them for the design of coordination mechanisms for self-organizing emergent systems.