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From the phys.org article:
As modern software systems continue inexorably to increase in complexity and capability, users have become accustomed to periodic cycles of updating and upgrading to avoid obsolescence—if at some cost in terms of frustration. In the case of the U.S. military, having access to well-functioning software systems and underlying content is critical to national security, but updates are no less problematic than among civilian users and often demand considerable time and expense. That is why today DARPA announced it will launch an ambitious four-year research project to investigate the fundamental computational and algorithmic requirements necessary for software systems and data to remain robust and functional in excess of 100 years.
The Building Resource Adaptive Software Systems, or BRASS, program seeks to realize foundational advances in the design and implementation of long-lived software systems that can dynamically adapt to changes in the resources they depend upon and environments in which they operate. Such advances will necessitate the development of new linguistic abstractions, formal methods, and resource-aware program analyses to discover and specify program transformations, as well as systems designed to monitor changes in the surrounding digital ecosystem. The program is expected to lead to significant improvements in software resilience, reliability and maintainability.
DARPA's press release and call for research proposals.
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Friday April 10 2015, @02:35AM
Like what? Write a controller for a caterpillar track robotic tank and have it adapting with no difficulties to starwars walkers?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 3, Interesting) by sigma on Friday April 10 2015, @03:54AM
See tibman's comment below. http://soylentnews.org/comments.pl?sid=6948&cid=168614 [soylentnews.org]
It's about software that's tolerant to large disruptions to its hardware, potentially including, as you say, different robotics platforms.
Frankly, it's not that hard to imagine - older platforms like Multics and even commodity Amiga computers had some very good automatic configuration systems. A redesign that included the ability to search and integrate something like OSRS projects [osrfoundation.org] on demand should be able to handle robotic hardware variants.
Better hardware design standards that included a modern version plug and play of the Amiga's Autoconfig would go a long way to making component changes seamless, as would open hardware with ROM-based self-documenting properties.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday April 10 2015, @07:46AM
Then it is no longer the software that is adaptable but hardware that is fixed enough through time that software does not need to change itself. Might as well call windows infinitely adaptable because a usb stick can be plugged in with a patching script.
(Score: 2) by tibman on Friday April 10 2015, @01:26PM
A USB stick isn't a piece of hardware the OS is running on. The hardware shouldn't be fixed in time, that is the point. The software should be adaptable enough to recognize that ram, processors, and storage being added and removed from the system. You should be able to bisect the bus and the system still function (end users won't even notice).
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