IEEE Systems, Man and Cybernetics Magazine - July 2021 - 9

challenging. This raises the question of what the most
suitable self-organization rules are for IoT software
models. Can we embed those rules in the semantics of
a (universal) component model? Can we take inspiration
from self-organizing biological systems to define
bioinspired component models?
Conclusion
Although the dream of removing the tasks performed by
software engineers is far from reality, self-organization
offers an encouraging route toward the next generation of
software systems in which software is not explicitly programmed
but emerges without any central controller to
meet the needs of a given context at runtime. We refer to
this class of abstractions as self-organizing software models.
In this article, we presented the definition, motivation,
challenges, and future directions of these abstractions.
To date, self-organizing software models are still in
their infancy, and their challenges hinder the development
of a self-organizing software solution applicable to a wide
variety of IoT domains. We envision that this nascent field
will be of great relevance in the coming years to deal with
the inherent scale, uncertainty, dynamism, and complexity
that IoT systems are increasingly posing.
About the Author
Damian Arellanes (damian.arellanes@lancaster.ac.uk)
earned his Ph.D. degree in computer science from the University
of Manchester, United Kingdom. He is an assistant
professor in computer science at the School of Computing
and Communications, Lancaster University, Lancaster, LA1
4YW, U.K. His research interests are at the intersection of
models of computation, cyberphysical systems, and autonomic
computing, with a particular emphasis on self-organizing
software models.
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IEEE Systems, Man and Cybernetics Magazine - July 2021

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