Guide for the Layman Seminar, Academic Course and Industry Training Course.

1. Awareness Slides Factory
Introduction
As part of the activities and events organised by Awareness, we have organised in 2012 a
Slides Factory with the objective of producing slides covering a wide range of subjects
relevant to (self-)awareness in autonomic systems. This event was the first attempt to build a
solid body of knowledge for two training events: a layman seminar and an academic course.
The Slides Factory took place in Barcelona on September 24-26, 2012. Besides the 3
organisers from the VU University Amsterdam (Nivea Ferreira, Mark Hoogendoorn and Gusz
Eiben), these were the participants:
 Giacomo Cabri
 Rene Doursat
 Jose Luis Fernandez Marquez
 Jose Halloy
 Peter Lewis
 Jeremy Pitt
 Mark Read
 Alan Winfield
 Martin Wirsing
Our aim was to cover various angles and approaches of self-awareness in autonomic
systems. For this purpose, the Slides Factory participants were chosen based on their
(different) research experience and interests.
The great collaborative process among participants resulted in two complete sets of slides.
Slides topics were chosen in accordance with the targetted audience. For the layman
seminar, we have a more generic set of topics, making use of comprehensible terms and
definitions. Giving its character, the academic course goes much deeper on the definitions,
engineering and evaluation of self-aware systems.
Slides Set I – Layman Seminar
For the layman seminar, the idea is to have the slides used as "building blocks". The person
giving the seminar can choose, for instance, between a small number of introductory
examples and tailor his/her presentation accordingly.
All slides on this set were produced by all Slides Factory participants.
Layman Seminar Outline
1. Introductory examples
a. Robotics

2. b. autonomic systems (robots swarm, science cloud, cooperative e-vehicles)
c. networks (communication networks, power networks)
2. Motivation (self-* properties)
3. "Definition" / circumscription of
a. autonomic systems
b. self-awareness
4. Summary of existing research projects + issues tackled by these
5. Existing "self-aware" systems (sources of inspiration) –
a. in nature
b. man-made
6. Some related general properties
a. different levels of awareness (quality)
b. collectivity / swarm / distributedness
c. perception (sensing data + context)
d. (internal) model
7. Impact short / long term
a. Safety
b. sustainable future
c. philosophical issues
8. Research Questions & Challenges
Slides Set II – Industry Training
The industry training is a set of 4 lectures to give an overview of self-awareness in autonomic
systems, present relevant properties, platforms and simulation tools, and review the domain
scenarios considered in the Awareness projects.
Industry Training Outline (4 lectures)
1. A comprehensible introduction to self-awareness in autonomic systems
2. Self-awareness in autonomic systems: general properties, impact and open issues
3. Simulation tools and existing platforms for self-awareness
4. Self-awareness in autonomic systems: applications and research
Note that we have chosen not to include a detailed account on the design and engineering of
self-aware autonomic systems in this set. However, this does not impose any restriction on
the level of training that can be given: anyone interested in providing more details regarding
various design and engineering approaches can make use of the academic lectures created
for this purpose. The academic course content is given next.

3. Slides Set III – Academic Course
The academic course is a set of 13 lectures, covering in depth the relevant topics for self-
awareness in autonomic systems and touching on research carried out by the Awareness
projects. In special in lecture 13, Applications of and challenges in self-awareness, a brief
overview of each Awareness project is given, including research aims, achievements and
examples.
Each lecture was produced by one (up to three) participant(s). The name of the one(s)
responsible for a specific lecture is clearly noted on the slides.
Academic Course Outline (13 lectures)
1. Self-awareness and computational self-awareness
2. Self-organization and emergence in networked systems
3. Autonomic multi-agent systems
4. Introduction to complex systems and agent-based modeling
5. Overview of methods for engineering autonomic self-aware systems - AIS, EC
6. Morphogenetic engineering
7. Introduction to formal engineering of autonomic systems
8. Pattern-based design of autonomic systems
9. Simulation tools and existing platforms for self-awareness
10. On-line adaptation, learning, and evolution
11. Systems with internal models
12. Safety and ethics of self-awareness
13. Applications of and challenges in self-awareness
Using the Slides Factory Material
Anyone can have access to the slides either through the Awareness website (under Training,
Slides Factory 2012) or our Awareness App.
The researchers who took part in the Slides Factory are the ones responsible for such a
great slides production effort. Even though they all agree that slides should be publicly
available, we feel that their names should be mentioned when slides from either the layman
seminar or academic course are used.
Therefore, we kindly ask that anyone making use of (all or part of) the available slides to
mention which person(s) was/were involved in the design of such slides. And also mention
that these were made available under the Training materials of the Awareness CA initiative.