Task-based Self-Organization in Large Smart Spaces: Issues and Challenges

Smart spaces of the future will consist of a large number of computing devices intelligently communicating with each other to perform various day-to-day tasks. Selforganization of these devices to form task-oriented clusters is a necessity as these devices grow in number. Given a rich collection of mobile tetherless smart-devices, it is important to investigate schemes for task-based self-organization so as to enable a large number of ubiquitous services and applications. We believe that making the self-organization process task-based, instead of depending on connectivity and nearness alone, will augment the richness of any given ad-hoc network of nodes and will enhance its capabilities significantly. We elaborate on some theoretical and practical research issues in task-based self-organization in this position statement. Proc. DARPA/NIST/NSF Workshop on Research Issues in Smart Environments, Georgia Intitute of Technology, Atlanta, GA, July 1999.