ISADS 97 Third IEEE International Symposium on Autonomous Decentralized
Systems
by Eckhard Moeller
The Third International Symposium on Autonomous Decentralized Systems
(ISADS 97) took place in Berlin, Germany, 9-11 April 1997. The symposium
brought together nearly 200 participants from research and industry, coming
from 20 different countries all over the world. Major trends and developments
in distributed applications that combine computing and telecommunication
aspects with a unified development and run-time support environment were
discussed and applications in such areas as factory automation, train traffic
control and management, and building control were presented.
45 papers were selected from more than 100 submissions with emphasis
on multi-agent systems, object-oriented middleware and telecommunication
service development, and the above-mentioned application areas. The first
invited speaker, Hagen Hultzsch, Deutsche Telekom AG Board of Management,
discussed the convergence of decentralized information technology and telecommunications,
paving the way for the telematic society. Together with entertainment electronics
this convergence industry is the growth market today. The second invited
speaker, Hiroshi Kuwahara, Representative Director and Executive Vice-President,
Hitachi Ltd. Japan, presented in brief the major achievements of autonomous
decentralized systems (ADS) in the last twenty years particular in the
areas of manufacturing and train traffic control systems. Information services
systems in the field of telecommunications will be an important application
of the next generation ADS.
The three panels at the end of each symposium day discussed:
- the role of ADS in network computing from the object-oriented tele-communication
application design and development point of view, including object-oriented
middleware technologies such as CORBA (Common Object Request Broker Architecture),
covering mobile agent aspects and emphasizing the need for applications
and supporting system functions to be flexible and extensible (chaired
by Liba Svobodova, IBM Research, Switzerland)
- standards for ADS, summarizing emerging ADS architectures, the needs
and targets for standardization and emerging standards for information
services and control applications (chaired by Kane Kim, UC Irvine, USA)
- challenges and future trends for ADS in terms of globally distributed
control systems for the Internet and for the next generation computers
including operating systems (chaired by Jürgen Nehmer, University
of Kaiserslautern, Germany).
At the end of the symposium some 55 participants made use of the opportunity
to visit the Production Technology Center Berlin (PTZ) which is operated
by the Fraunhofer Institute for Production Systems and Design Technology
in cooperation with the Institute for Machine Tools and Factory Management
of the Technical University Berlin, and GMD FOKUS. The PTZ offered presentations
in such areas as Simultaneous Engineering Broadband Integrated Development,
Team Based European Automotive Manufacturing, Virtual Clay Modeling for
Automotive Industry, Teleservices and Remote Diagnosis for Machine Tools,
Multimedia Teleservices for Distributed Planning and Simulation of Deep
Drawing Processes. The demonstrations at GMD FOKUS included developments
in the context of Deutsche Telekom Berkom: TINA Based Telecommuni-cation
Services in a Heterogeneous CORBA Execution Environment with Personal Mobility
Support, Interactive Multimedia Services, Global Broadband Connectivity
Services and Management, Network Interoperability and Performance and Internet
Next Generation.
ISADS 97 was sponsored by the IEEE Computer Society, the Information
Processing Society of Japan and the Society of Instrument and Control Engineers
of Japan, in cooperation with the International Federation for Information
Processing, the International Federation of Automatic Control and the Gesellschaft
für Informatik. The General Chair had Prof. Radu Popescu-Zeletin,
GMD FOKUS; the Program Committee was co-chaired by Prof. Jürgen Nehmer,
University of Kaiserslautern, Germany, Dr. Yuji Inoue, NTT, Japan and Dr.
Richard Soley, OMG, USA. The symposium was organized by GMD FOKUS. Financial
support came from Hitachi, Deutsche Telekom Berkom, NEC, Digital, Hewlett
Packard, IBM and GMD FOKUS.
After the first two symposia in Kawasaki, Japan (ISADS 93) and Phoenix,
Arizona, USA (ISADS 95), the third ISADS, which was held under the patronage
of the Governing Mayor of Berlin, was altogether a great success due to
its excellent technical program and organisation. The symposium dinner
was well received, not at least due to the perfectly well suited environment
and exhibits of the Deutsche Technikmuseum Berlin. The proceedings of ISADS
97 have been published by the IEEE Computer Society Press. The fourth ISADS
is scheduled to take place in Tokyo in March 1999.
Please contact:
Eckhard Moeller - GMD
Tel: +49 30 25499-234/200
E-mail: moeller@fokus.gmd.de
