Distribution vs centralization (Was Re: Announcement: GDHE )3.2

On Fri, 27 Jun 2003, Anthony Mallet wrote:

> Herman Bruyninckx writes:
> 
> [distributed applications]
> | I think that, almost by definition, there must be a level of control
> | that centralizes information. Otherwise your fleet of robot can never
> | perform a global task, or evaluate how well it does that task...
> 
> Just my 2c on this particular point:
> 
> I think that a challenge for distributed application is precisely to
> avoid any centralized components... or it's not distributed anymore (at
> least not fully distributed).

I think the issue is to see _how much_ you can distribute, not whether
or not you need centralization. Of course you need centralization, or
it's impossible for the human programmer/user of the distributed
robotics system to keep the whole thing under control!
The bandwidth and timing of the centralization can be quite loose, of
course. The better the autonomy of the distributed agents, the looser
one can centralize. 

> I'm not sure the example is relevant, but if you think about you and me
> performing a task, there won't be any physical object that will centralize
> information. We are just a fully distributed system that can exchange and
> share information, agree or disagree on the way to do things, etc...
> The information is not centralized anyhow.
> 
This information is not, but the information about what task we want
to achieve, and how well we do _is_ centralized. If it is not, how can
we ever cooperate productively...?

Anyway, the 'agent based' infrastructure in the project proposal will
have some level of centralization, because of the feedback component.

Herman

-- 
  K.U.Leuven, Mechanical Engineering, Robotics Research Group
<http://people.mech.kuleuven.ac.be/~bruyninc> Tel: +32 16 322480