Role of time in symbiotic systems
- Univ. of Maryland, College Park, MD (United States)
All systems have a dynamics which reflects the changes in the system in time and, therefore, have to maintain a notion of time, either explicitly or implicitly. Traditionally, the notion of time in constructed systems has been implicitly specified at design time through rigid structures such as sampled data systems which operate with a fixed time tick, feedback systems which are designed reflecting a fixed time scale for the dynamics of the system as well as the controller responses, etc. In biological systems, the sense of time is a key element but it is not rigidly structured, even though all such systems have a clear notion of time. We define the notion of time in systems in terms of temporal locality, time scale and time horizon. Temporal locality gives the notion of the accuracy with which the system knows about the current time. Time scale reflects the scale indicating the smallest and the largest granularity considered. It also reflects the reaction time. The time horizon indicates the time beyond which the system considers to be distant future and may not take it into account in its actions. Note that the temporal locality, time scale and the time horizon may be different for different types of actions of a system, thereby permitting the system to use multiple notions of time concurrently. In multi agent systems each subsystem may have its own notion of time but when intentions take place a coordination is necessary. Such coordination requires that the notions of time for different agents of the system be consistent. Clearly, the consistency requirement in this case does not mean exactly identical but implies that different agents can coordinate their actions which must take place in time. When the actions only require a determinate ordering the required coordination is much less severe than the case requiring actions to take place at the same time.
- OSTI ID:
- 466424
- Report Number(s):
- CONF-9610138-; TRN: 97:001309-0003
- Resource Relation:
- Conference: International multi-disciplinary conference on intelligent systems: a semiotic perspective, Gaithersburg, MD (United States), 21-23 Oct 1996; Other Information: PBD: 1996; Related Information: Is Part Of Intelligent systems: A semiotic perspective. Volume I: Theoretical semiotics; Albus, J.; Meystel, A.; Quintero, R.; PB: 303 p.
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
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