Organic computing is computing that behaves and interacts with humans in an organic manner. The term "organic" is used to describe the system's behavior, and does not imply that they are constructed from

organic materials Organic matter, organic material, or natural organic matter refers to the large source of carbon-based compounds found within natural and engineered, terrestrial, and aquatic environments. It is matter composed of organic compounds that have c ...

. It is based on the insight that we will soon be surrounded by large collections of

autonomous systems An autonomous robot is a robot that acts without recourse to human control. The first autonomous robots environment were known as Elmer and Elsie, which were constructed in the late 1940s by W. Grey Walter. They were the first robots in history t ...

, which are equipped with

sensor A sensor is a device that produces an output signal for the purpose of sensing a physical phenomenon. In the broadest definition, a sensor is a device, module, machine, or subsystem that detects events or changes in its environment and sends ...

s and

actuator An actuator is a component of a machine that is responsible for moving and controlling a mechanism or system, for example by opening a valve. In simple terms, it is a "mover". An actuator requires a control device (controlled by control signal) a ...

s, aware of their environment, communicate freely, and organize themselves in order to perform the actions and services that seem to be required. The goal is to construct such systems 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 seems absolutely central. In order to achieve these goals, our technical systems will have to act more independently, flexibly, and autonomously, i.e. they will have to exhibit lifelike properties. We call such systems "organic". Hence, an "Organic Computing System" is a technical system which adapts dynamically to exogenous and endogenous change. It is characterized by the properties of self-organization, self-configuration, self-

optimization Mathematical optimization (alternatively spelled ''optimisation'') or mathematical programming is the selection of a best element, with regard to some criterion, from some set of available alternatives. It is generally divided into two subfi ...

self-healing Self-healing refers to the process of recovery (generally from psychological disturbances, trauma, etc.), motivated by and directed by the patient, guided often only by instinct. Such a process encounters mixed fortunes due to its amateur nature, ...

, self-

protection Protection is any measure taken to guard a thing against damage caused by outside forces. Protection can be provided to physical objects, including organisms, to systems, and to intangible things like civil and political rights. Although th ...

, self-explaining, and

context awareness Context awareness refers, in information and communication technologies, to a capability to take into account the ''situation'' of ''entities'', which may be users or devices, but are not limited to those. ''Location'' is only the most obvious el ...

. It can be seen as an extension of the

Autonomic computing Autonomic computing (AC) is distributed computing resources with self-managing characteristics, adapting to unpredictable changes while hiding intrinsic complexity to operators and users. Initiated by IBM in 2001, this initiative ultimately aime ...

vision of IBM. In a variety of research projects the priority research progra
SPP 1183
of the German Research Foundation (DFG) addresses fundamental challenges in the design of Organic Computing systems; its objective is a deeper understanding of emergent global behavior in self-organizing systems and the design of specific concepts and tools to support the construction of Organic Computing systems for technical applications.

References

* Müller-Schloer, Christian; v.d. Malsburg, Christoph and Würtz, Rolf P. ''Organic Computing.'' Aktuelles Schlagwort in Informatik Spektrum (2004) pp. 332–336. * Müller-Schloer, Christian. ''Organic Computing – On the Feasibility of Controlled Emergence.'' CODES + ISSS 2004 Proceedings (2004) pp 2–5, ACM Press, . * Rochner, Fabian and Müller-Schloer, Christian. ''Emergence in Technical Systems.'' it Special Issue on Organic Computing (2005) pp. 188–200, Oldenbourg Verlag, Jahrgang 47, ISSN 1611-2776. * Schmeck, Hartmut. ''Organic Computing – A New Vision for Distributed Embedded Systems.'' Proceedings of the Eighth IEEE International Symposium on Object-Oriented Real-Time Distributed Computing (ISORC’05) (2005) pp. 201–203, IEEE, IEEE Computer Society 2005. * Würtz, Rolf P. (Editor): ''Organic Computing (Understanding Complex Systems)''
Springer
2008. {{ISBN, 978-3642096426.

External links

DFG SPP 1183 Organic Computing

Position Paper Organic Computing
(German)

The Organic Computing Page

The PUPS/P3 Organic Computing Environment for Linux
(

Free Software Free software or libre software is computer software distributed under terms that allow users to run the software for any purpose as well as to study, change, and distribute it and any adapted versions. Free software is a matter of liberty, no ...

)
SeSAm
Multiagent simulator and graphical modelling environment. (

) Programming paradigms

See also

References

External links