A Machine Learning-Based Approach to Support the Bottom-Up Design of
Simple Emergent Behaviors in Systems-of-Systems
Abstract
Systems-of-Systems (SoS) are composed of multiple independent systems
called constituents that, together, achieve a set of goals by means of
emergent behaviors. Those behaviors can be deliberately planned as a
combination of the individual functionalities (herein named as
features) provided by the constituents. Currently, SoS engineers
heavily rely on their own creativity and prior experience to combine the
features and design the behaviors. However, the limitation of human
perception in complex scenarios can lead to engineering sub-optimized
SoS arrangements, potentially causing waste of the resources,
sub-optimal services and reduction in quality. To handle the
aforementioned issues, this article presents a machine learning-based
mechanism for inferring/suggesting emergent behaviors that could be
designed over a given set of constituents. An initial dataset was
elaborated from a systematic mapping to feed the mechanism and a
web-application was developed as a means for experts to evaluate this
mechanism. Results revealed that the algorithm developed is capable of
predicting feasible emergent behaviors for different sets of
constituents and the system can be useful in the sense of aiding SoS
engineers and experts in the bottom-up design of these behaviors.