The Space and Motion of Communicating Agents

Robin Milner presents a unified structural theory for modelling networks of agents that is destined to have far-reaching significance.

Robin Milner (Author)

9780521490306, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 19 March 2009

214 pages, 50 exercises
23.5 x 15.7 x 1.5 cm, 0.44 kg

The world is increasingly populated with interactive agents distributed in space, real or abstract. These agents can be artificial, as in computing systems that manage and monitor traffic or health; or they can be natural, e.g. communicating humans, or biological cells. It is important to be able to model networks of agents in order to understand and optimise their behaviour. Robin Milner describes in this book just such a model, by presenting a unified and rigorous structural theory, based on bigraphs, for systems of interacting agents. This theory is a bridge between the existing theories of concurrent processes and the aspirations for ubiquitous systems, whose enormous size challenges our understanding. The book is reasonably self-contained mathematically, and is designed to be learned from: examples and exercises abound, solutions for the latter are provided. Like Milner's other work, this is destined to have far-reaching and profound significance.

Preface
Part I. Space: 1. The idea of bigraphs
2. Defining bigraphs
3. Algebra for bigraphs
4. Relative and minimal bounds
5. Bigraphical structure
6. Sorting
Part II. Motion: 7. Reactions and transitions
8. Bigraphical reactive systems
9. Behaviour in link graphs
10. Behavioural theory for CCS
Part III. Development: 11. Further topics
12. Background, development and related work
Appendices: Appendix 1. Technical detail
Appendix 2. Solutions to exercises
Bibliography
Index
Glossary of terms and symbols.

Subject Areas: Mathematical theory of computation [UYA], Communications engineering / telecommunications [TJK]