08141 Executive Summary – Organic Computing - Controlled Self-organization

Abstract

Organic Computing (OC) has become a challenging vision for the design of future information processing systems: As they become increasingly powerful, cheaper and smaller, our environment will be filled with collections of autonomous systems equipped with sensors and actuators to be aware of their environment, to communicate, and to organize themselves in order to perform the actions and servic-es that seem to be required. However, due to  increasing complexity we will not be able to explicitly design and manage all intelligent components of a digitally enhanced environment in every detail and anticipate every possible configuration. Therefore, our technical systems will have to act more independently, flexibly, and autonomously, i.e., they will have to exhibit life-like properties. We call such systems "organic". Hence, an "Organic Computing System" is a technical system, which adapts dynamically to the current conditions of its environment. It will be self-organizing, self-configuring, self-healing, self-protecting, self-explaining, and context-aware.