Linking schemas and module specifications for distributed systems

The authors aim at linking two important concepts for the specification of distributed systems: the notion of schema used in brain theory, neural engineering, robotics, and related areas, which is advocated as a specification concept for cooperative computing in sixth-generation systems; and the concept of algebraic module specification used in the theory of formal specifications of modular software systems. It is shown how aspects of schema theory can be formalized by adapting the theory of module specifications, extending the theory to be more suitable for future developments in distributed computing. In particular, it is shown how schemes in the sense of the robot scheme language RS can be formulated in analogy with the framework of algebraic module specifications, leading to a more abstract view of robot schemas, which leads to interesting compositionality results for the semantics of joined schemas