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Scalability in Self-Organizing Systems: An Experimental Case Study on Foraging Systems

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Disciplinary Convergence in Systems Engineering Research

Abstract

Scalability is a great advantage for systems that face uncertain demand. Scalable systems can be increased in size at a reasonable cost to meet increasing demand, or they can be reduced in size to minimize ongoing costs in the face of falling demand. Self-organization is often hailed as a strategy for creating scalable systems, as they have low integration costs and no communication bandwidth limit from a central controller. This paper investigates the scalability of a self-organizing foraging system. The results show that there are fitness penalties associated with scaling systems up or down from the size they had been optimized for, and these penalties are higher for scaling up rather than down. However, if the system's agent behavioral parameters can be adjusted as the system size changes, the system-level fitness increases linearly with size.

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Intelligent Systems Technology, Inc., Los Angeles, CA, USA

    James Humann PhD

  2. University of Southern California, Los Angeles, CA, USA

    Yan Jin PhD & Azad M. Madni PhD

Authors
  1. James Humann PhD
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  2. Yan Jin PhD
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  3. Azad M. Madni PhD
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to James Humann PhD .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Systems Architecting and Engineering Program, University of Southern California, Los Angeles, California, USA

    Azad M. Madni

  2. Center for Systems and Software Engineering, University of Southern California, Los Angeles, California, USA

    Barry Boehm

  3. Aerospace & Mechanical Engineering, University of Southern California, Los Angeles, California, USA

    Roger G. Ghanem

  4. University of Southern California, Los Angeles, California, USA

    Daniel Erwin

  5. Systems Engineering Fellow, The Aerospace Corporation, El Segundo, California, USA

    Marilee J. Wheaton

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Humann, J., Jin, Y., Madni, A.M. (2018). Scalability in Self-Organizing Systems: An Experimental Case Study on Foraging Systems. In: Madni, A., Boehm, B., Ghanem, R., Erwin, D., Wheaton, M. (eds) Disciplinary Convergence in Systems Engineering Research. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-62217-0_38

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-62217-0_38

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  • Publisher Name: Springer, Cham

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-319-62216-3

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-319-62217-0

  • eBook Packages: EngineeringEngineering (R0)

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