Autonomous objects and bottom-up composition in ZOO applied to a case study of biological reactivity

Abstract

As part of our work on the formal analysis of object-oriented models, we turn to systems where many autonomous individuals interact to give rise to complex collective behaviour. We adapt our ZOO [1,2] structuring and apply it to a case study based on a published model of part of the immune system [3]. The formalisation calls for a bottom-up solution with no central control over individual units, and includes an approach to represent feedback channels enabling broadcast communication between individuals and across levels. © 2008 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg.