Immunological inspiration for building a new generation of autonomic systems

Autonomic computing systems of the future will be required to exhibit a number of properties which cannot be engineered using current technologies and algorithms. The most direct inspiration for building such systems is nature, where for example the central nervous system and the immune system function in an autonomic manner. In this paper we show how mechanisms inspired by recent advances in the field of immunology may offer exactly the inspiration required for engineering this new generation of computational systems which are robust, secure, self-organise and self-heal in manner currently unachievable with established software engineering techniques. Immune-inspired mechanisms are often synonomous with providing security in computing applications — however we intend to show that a wider examination of the immune literature offers far greater potential for exploitation of immune-mechanisms and paradigms than simply providing protection to a host. We conclude with a number of case studies, describing work currently in progress, which demonstrate two very different application areas in which the mechanisms described are being applied to illustrate our point.