Simulating emergent properties of coordination in Maude: the collective sorting case

Recent coordination languages and models are moving towards the application of techniques coming from the research context of complex systems: adaptivity and self-organisation are exploited in order to tackle the openness, dynamism and unpredictability of today's distributed systems. In this area, systems are to be described using stochastic models, and simulation is a valuable tool both for analysis and design. Accordingly, in this work we focus on modelling and simulating emergent properties of coordination techniques. We first develop a framework acting as a general-purpose engine for simulating stochastic transition system, built as a library for the MAUDE term rewriting system. We then evaluate this tool to a coordination problem called collective sorting, where autonomous agents move tuples across different tuple spaces according to local criteria, and resulting in the emergence of the complete clustering property.