ORIGINAL ARTICLE P. Sapaty (*) · A. Morozov Institute of Mathematical Machines and Systems, National Academy of Sciences, Glushkova Ave 42, Kiev 03187, Ukraine Tel. +380-44-5265023; Fax +380-44-5266457 e-mail: sapaty@immsp.kiev.ua R. Finkelstein Robotic Technology Inc., Potomac, MD, USA M. Sugisaka Department of Electrical and Electronic Engineering, Oita University, Oita, Japan D. Lambert Fusion for Situation Awareness Initiative, Defence Science and Technology Organisation, South Australia, Australia This work was presented in part at the 12th International Symposium on Artificial Life and Robotics, Oita, Japan, January 25–27, 2007 Artif Life Robotics (2008) 12:88–96 © ISAROB 2008 DOI 10.1007/s10015-007-0447-7 Peter Sapaty · Anatoly Morozov · Robert Finkelstein Masanori Sugisaka · Dale Lambert A new concept of flexible organization for distributed robotized systems 1 Introduction In managing large systems, whether civil or military, we usually think of them as something already existing, with proper expertise in parts (nodes) and relations between them. We also assume that there exists a sort of command and control infrastructure, usually hierarchical, covering all its parts, through which any external orders to these systems are received and both internal and outside impacts realized. This infrastructure should also support the overall system stability and integrity, and guide its internal behavior in accordance with the existing rules, and local and global goals pursued. However, in complex environments, the system organi- zation may be indiscriminately damaged at any moment, with skills vanished in nodes, relations broken, and infra- structures destroyed. To bring the system back into life, we may need to restore its parts, as well as the whole, and at runtime. 1 Moreover, quite different philosophies, supported by new technologies, toward the organization of dynamic emergent systems may be needed. First of all, the power and universality of the traditional command and control (or C2) may be questioned, as this already takes place in the area of crisis and disaster response, as described in Tierney, 2 and Tierney et al. 3 The C2 approach is based on the idea that the right way to manage disasters is through centralized control and hier- archies, but actual community crisis response networks, as indicated by the reaction in recent well-known disasters, looked nothing like the military-type C2 hierarchies. 2 They consisted of loosely coupled collections of individuals, groups, and organizations that continually changed, having permeable boundaries. Rather than being organized according to the principles of command and control, disaster response activities were undertaken through a complex and varied set of organiza- tional arrangements characterized by a high degree of emergence and improvisation. New networks formed that blended the activities of existing organizations with those Abstract The concept presented for the management of distributed dynamic systems is based on installing in all system components of a universal intelligent module inter- preting special high-level language, in which any centralized or distributed control can be expressed. The mission sce- nario in the language, starting from any interpreter, is collectively executed by their network. The interpreters perform appropriate operations in nodes, while passing other parts of the scenario, together with intermediate data, to other interpreters in a coordinated manner. This process covers the system at runtime, and sets up distributed command and control infrastructures providing the overall integrity and goal orientation. This approach allows us to manage robotized systems in unpredictable and hostile environments, with possible failures of components. The language description and programming examples in it are provided. Key words Crisis management · Cooperative engagement capability · Ubiquitous command and control · Distributed systems · High-level language · Mission scenario · Interpre- tation network · Robotized systems Received and accepted: April 16, 2007