A language and framework for dynamic component ensembles in smart systems

Smart system applications (SSAs)—a heterogeneous landscape of applications of Internet of things, cyber-physical systems, and smart sensing systems—are composed of autonomous yet inherently cooperating components. An important problem in this area is how to hoist the cooperation of software components forming dynamic groups—ensembles—at the architectural level of an SSA. This is hard since ensembles can overlap, be nested, and be dynamically formed and dismantled based on several criteria. A related problem is how to combine component and ensemble specification with a well-established language supported on multiple platforms. To target these problems, we propose a specification and implementation language Trait-based COmponent Ensemble Language (TCOEL) based on Scala internal DSL, to describe both the architecture and formation of dynamic ensembles of components and their functional internals. To raise the level of expressivity, we introduce the concept of domain-specific extensions (traits) to the TCOEL core to reflect different paradigms’ concerns—such as movement in a 2D map, state-space modeling of physical processes, and statistical reasoning about uncertainty. This allows for configuring TCOEL for the needs of a specific SSA use case and, at the same time, facilitates reuse. To evaluate TCOEL, we show how it can be beneficially used in addressing the coordination of agents in a RoboCup Rescue Simulation application.