ReFrESH: A self-adaptive architecture for autonomous embedded systems

Abstract

This paper presents an architecture for automating the reconfiguration of system deal with unforeseen situations, named ReFrESH, for distributed autonomous embedded systems which 1) supports both hardware and software reconfiguration based on task-related functional requirements without disturbing system at runtime; 2) provides a type of Embedded Virtual Machine to facilitate components distribution across node boundaries; 3) generates optimal configurations dynamically based on non-functional requirements. The feasibility of ReFrESH and its management algorithms are evaluated for “visual servoing” of three miniature robot scenario. Moreover, one self-adaptive application is implemented to show the realistic performance of ReFrESH. The results demonstrate that ReFrESH can enable the system to handle various situations dynamically and decrease the complexity of self-adaptation.