Keynote Gruver

Centralized systems have disadvantages that make them unsuitable for large-scale integration, including lack of scalability, lack of fault tolerance, lack of security and privacy, and communications overhead, resulting in additional expenses for integration and system maintenance. The use of Holonic Intelligence technologies can alleviate these weaknesses. Holonic Intelligence Systems utilize cooperative agents known as Holons, organized in hardware or software components, to independently handle specialized tasks and collaborate to achieve system-wide objectives. These systems distribute hardware resources and processing, and logistical and strategic requirements, to achieve improved scalability, robustness, flexibility, security and privacy, and reduced communications overhead. This lecture describes technologies and applications of Holonic Intelligence that have been developed by the presenter and his colleagues at Intelligent Robotics Corporation in cooperation with students at the iDEA Laboratory of Simon Fraser University, and members of the Holonic Manufacturing Systems Consortium and the SMC Technical Committee on Distributed Intelligent Systems. Holonic Intelligence (HI) Platforms are used to build HI-Nodes that are connected to build HI-Networks in which information can be routed by alternative paths and new nodes can be automatically added to the network without systems reconfiguration. A hardware and software architecture will be described for a Holonic Intelligence Platform that is capable of wireless peer-to-peer communications and agent-based decision making. Applications include automated data collection, asset and personnel tracking, automated meter reading, distributed digital services, inventory management, locally dependent advertising, and distributed energy resource management.