Cyber biosphere for future embedded systems

Abstract

Future Embedded Systems are heading into a degree of complexity which is far beyond today's level. As most technical artifacts will be interconnected in some sense ("Internet of Things") Embedded Systems of the future cannot be treated as isolated entities any longer. Two major tendencies to cope with this challenge can be observed. The first one takes its inspiration from the technical roots of Embedded Systems. They are looked at from their technical nature but the traditional boundaries of Embedded Systems, especially to consider them as isolated systems are overcome. This approach became well known under the name "Cyber Physical Systems (CPS)". The second approach observes the existence of highly successful and relatively stable systems in form of our biosphere. So it seems to be wise to take inspirations from the achievement of nature. This approach became rather popular under the term "Biologically Inspired Systems" or "Organic Computing". In this paper we will concentrate on the latter attempt to build the highly complex, highly sophisticated Embedded Systems of the future. Inspirations from ant colonies, from the hormone system, and from the immune system will shortly be discussed using specific examples. Some comparisons with the CPS approach will be made as well. © 2008 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg.