Dear Colleagues,

In the last few decades, we managed to build the most complex artifact ever made: the Internet. Today, millions of devices are connected, and their number is growing with the introduction of myriads of sensors and actuators. We have conceptual tools such as abstraction layers that help us to understand the complex structure of the global network and to extend it with new functions and capabilities. To this end, new communication media and protocols are introduced, giving new ways to exchange data and control. We use the Internet to find and obtain knowledge, but we need to empower its engine with autonomous capabilities to adapt processes and to synthesize new ones.

The introduction of a centralized controller preserving the consistent operation of autonomous entities seems an appealing shortcut. However, through the years, we have learned that such apparent simplification introduces several hidden problems: a performance bottleneck, a single point of failure, a security weakness, etc. By contrast, distributed systems scale better, are more resilient, and less exposed to intrusion.

However, their design is challenging, since communication latencies jeopardize timing, and the concept of a global state is a dangerous illusion. Distributed control is a powerful conceptual tool, just like abstraction layers, but very difficult to apply. We need research targeting systems of networked entities that use the available information to produce the kind of behaviors that we qualify as intelligent: to use the experience to learn how to cope with unanticipated events. We have several tools that individually pursue this aim, but we need to coordinate them using a multidisciplinary attitude. The range of application fields for such devices has limits that are yet to be defined: from personal assistants to robot swarms, from weather forecasts to sentiment analysis, etc.

The Special Issue on "Intelligent Distributed Computing" welcomes articles about computer systems that produce new, adaptive behaviors of member devices based on their collective experience. Contributions should provide what is needed in order to reproduce their results, i.e., databases, algorithms, program sources, and hardware designs, all of which should be made available to the readers. We will especially appreciate those that show how the results meet the specific demands of human environments, health, and culture.

Topics:

• Adaptive coordination of distributed agents
• Swarm intelligence and distributed robotics
• Distributed problem solving and planning
• Distributed approaches to machine learning
• Distributed Intelligence for medical application
• Distributed Intelligence for environmental control
• Distributed Intelligence in human–computer interaction
• Distributed Intelligence for the humanities
• Time in intelligent distributed systems

Dr. Augusto Ciuffoletti
Guest Editor

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