An Evaluation study of the effectiveness of modeling NASA swarm-based exploration missions with ASSL

Abstract

We assess the effectiveness of using the Autonomic System Specification Language (ASSL) to model ANTS (Autonomous Nano-Technology Swarm), a NASA concept swarm-based exploration mission. In this study, we draw upon our preliminary results of modeling some of the autonomic features of ANTS, to discuss and evaluate the advantages and shortcomings of this approach. Moreover, this paper, which documents the results of that study, identifies challenges and aspects of ANTS that cannot be modeled with ASSL. Therefore, an important contribution of this study is a critical analysis of ASSL as a specification language designed specifically for autonomic systems. © 2008 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg.