From awareness requirements to adaptive systems: A control-theoretic approach

Several proposals for the design of adaptive systems rely on some kind of feedback loop that monitors the system output and adapts in case of failure. Roadmap papers in the area advocate the need to make such feedback loops first class entities in adaptive systems design. We go further by adopting a Requirements Engineering perspective that is not only based on feedback loops but also applies other concepts from Control Theory to the design of adaptive systems. Our plans include a framework that reasons over requirements at runtime to provide adaptivity to a system proper. In this position paper, we argue for a control-theoretic view for adaptive systems and outline our long-term research agenda, briefly presenting work that we have already accomplished and discussing our plans for the future.