The AML Approach to Modeling Autonomic Systems

Autonomic systems are typically distributed, complex and concurrent systems, comprised of multiple interacting autonomic elements that often exhibit emergent behavior design and development of such systems is a non-trivial task that by definition requires specific software engineering approaches, including the use of specialized modeling techniques. This paper takes the well-known Prospecting Asteroids Mission from NASA, an autonomous and autonomic system for future exploration of asteroid fields, which can be considered as a axiomatic example of how autonomic principles can be applied in real terms. Introducing the agent modeling language (AML), we demonstrate using a series of didactic examples how AML can be applied to efficiently, accurately and comprehensively model the PAM system. A selection of AML models specifying the PAM domain, goals, architecture, and behaviors are presented which help demonstrate the utility of AML when modeling autonomous and autonomic systems