Software design for distributed sensing and computing tasks

In this paper we illustrate the benefits of a strongly typed software design framework, explore the difficulties in applying such a system in a distributed sensing setting, and describe the extended type system we have created and fielded in multi-robot sensing experiments. While the built-in type systems of modern object-oriented languages provide much of the functionality we desire, there is a level of synchronization required by both static and dynamic linking that limits the applicability of such a system to a scalable distributed sensing and computing platform. We show how the limitations of these robust strong type systems can be overcome, allowing one to bring their power to bear on distributed sensing. By adhering to a formal, well-supported type system, our framework offers a scalable approach to dynamic resource discovery and exploitation. A natural consequence of the platform’s design is a higher level design system for building multi-agent programs that itself enforces type safety when pairing data sources and sinks, both when the distributed task is being launched and as the task dynamically reconfigures itself to exploit new resources.