FEASIBILITY AND FUNCTIONALITY OF AUTONOMOUS OBJECTS IN THE HLA

The generality, autonomy, and mobility of autonomous objects open up new possibilities for supporting a broad range of requirements of federates and federations under the High Level Architecture (HLA). Their generality allows them to execute arbitrarily complex behaviors in heterogeneous environments without modification while their autonomy and mobility allow them to arrive at solutions collectively in a distributed environment without the bottlenecks of static, stationary systems. The feasibility of integrating autonomous objects systems into federates and federations is examined. Integration solutions considered include using the HLA and its Run-Time Infrastructure (RTI) as currently specified, extending the HLA to specifically support autonomous objects systems, and allowing autonomous objects to perform management functions outside the HLA. The range of functionality that autonomous objects can provide via the identified integration strategies is extrapolated. This functionality may include extension of global functionality or infrastructure, extension of a federate's model, and federation management or oversight.