In this project we investigate new feather-light distributed mechanisms for networking and distributed collaboration, and evaluate their feasibility through experimentation. These mechanisms can operate in a challenging environment of self-organizing collaborative ambient systems where nodes move, fail, and energy is a scarce resource. The main thrust of the work is therefore towards the development of new distributed timely system support, taking into account those specific features. In particular, schemes, which are able to work efficiently and dependably, in the presence of limited energy, processing power and memory, will be developed.
Ambient systems are
networked embedded systems, which are not only used for dedicated tasks in
environment control, but also to support users in their daily activities. They
will be based on an unbounded set of hardware artifacts and software entities,
embedded in everyday objects or realized as new types of applications in nature
environments, on work, at home, in the house, or on or around the body. The
proposed new feather-light protocols, algorithms, and firmware for networking
and distributed collaboration will be a basis for building self-organizing,
dependable and collaborative ambient systems. We will evaluate their
feasibility not only through theoretical analysis but also through
experimentation in order to keep the gap to further industrial development as
small as possible.
The FEATHERLIGHT project is executed in close cooperation with the EYES project and the SMART-SURROUNDINGS project.