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Abstract for Seminar
Wireless sensor networks pose some fascinating challenges for programming languages. How can we program a network as a whole, rather than providing functionality per-device? What are the correct structures for coding such behaviours? How to we make decisions in the face of pervasive noise and uncertainty? How can we manage the power consumption and progressive degradation of the network? These questions argue strongly for new programming approaches and languages.
Since we are still exploring the design space of such constructs, it is important that we can conduct experiments into new programming structures easily and quickly: there is no point spending time building things properly when we don't really know what we should be building. We are therefore developing Tay, an extensible virtual machine that can act as the target of traditional and staged compilers. Tay is an component-oriented evolution of Forth designed to support evolving levels of programming abstraction, to facilitate experiments in code migration, and to provide a basis for a range of experimental compilers.
In this talk we introduce Tay as very much a work-in-progress, and explore some of the design decisions and features that provide challenges in sensor network development.
Simon Dobson is Pro fessor of Com puter Sci ence in the School of Com puter Sci ence at the Uni ver sity of St Andrews. His research interests centre around the design, ana lysis and con struc tion of highly adapt ive, highly sen sor ised com put ing sys tems. His repu ta tion in the fields of auto nomic and per vas ive com put ing is sup por ted by over 100 inter na tion ally peer-reviewed pub lic a tions and lead er ship roles in research grants worth over EUR30M. He has served, amongst other activ it ies, as programme and gen eral chairs for the IEEE Inter na tional Con fer ence on Auto nomic Com put ing; as an asso ci ate editor of ACM Trans ac tions on Autonom ous and Adapt ive Sys tems; and as a mem ber of UKCRC, the expert com mit tee on UK com put ing research. Simon pre vi ously worked at the UK STFC's Ruther ford Appleton Labor at ory; at Trin ity Col lege Dub lin and UCD Dub lin in Ire land; and was also the founder and CEO of a research-led Dublin-based start-up com pany. He holds a BSc from the Uni ver sity of New castle upon Tyne and DPhil from the Uni ver sity of York, both in com puter sci ence, is a Chartered Fel low of the Brit ish Com puter Soci ety, a Chartered Engin eer and Senior Mem ber of the IEEE and ACM.