GMD Report, No. 84, 124 pages, 1999. Available at http://www.gmd.de/publications/report/0084/.
Abstract: The Flip-Tick Architecture (FTA) is a design paradigm for scalable distributed systems that in particular exhibit a priori unknown dynamic characteristics and/or involve severe uncertainties such as considerable disturbances, inaccuracies, and unmodeled dynamics. Such systems typically search large data spaces with unknown properties, carry out complex control tasks in open environments or perform simulations of real-world processes for lack of suitable mathematical models. The Flip-Tick Architecture provides a platform for implementing such systems on distributed hardware. In particular, it is designed for applications that feature numerous mathematical and heuristic algorithms which are embedded in a flexible connectivity structure and are executed in nested, sequential, concurrent or alternative cycles as parts of iterative or interactive processes. The report describes the static and dynamic features of the Flip-Tick Architecture and selected aspects of its implementations. Using high-level Petri nets formal ``blueprints'' are provided that model the generic behavior of FTA systems in an executable way.
Keywords: architecture, distributed systems, robotics, control system, simulation, high-level Petri nets, Coloured Petri Nets.