A survey on nature-inspired metaphors for pervasive service ecosystems

Emerging pervasive computing scenarios require open service frameworks promoting situated and self-adaptive behaviors, and supporting diversity in services and long-term evolvability. This suggests adopting a nature-inspired approach, where pervasive services are modeled and deployed as autonomous individuals in an ecosystem of other services, data sources, and pervasive devices. However, there are many possibly nature-inspired metaphors that can be adopted, and choosing one may require a careful analysis of the pros and cons of the different metaphors. The purpose of this paper is to analyze the key requirements and desiderata for next generation pervasive computing services and associated infrastructures.