Applying Machine Learning to Reduce the Adaptation Space in Self-Adaptive Systems : an exploratory work

Sammanfattning: Self-adaptive systems are capable of autonomously adjusting their behavior at runtime to accomplish particular adaptation goals. The most common way to realize self-adaption is using a feedback loop(s) which contains four actions: collect runtime data from the system and its environment, analyze the collected data, decide if an adaptation plan is required, and act according to the adaptation plan for achieving the adaptation goals. Existing approaches achieve the adaptation goals by using formal methods, and exhaustively verify all the available adaptation options, i.e., adaptation space. However, verifying the entire adaptation space is often not feasible since it requires time and resources. In this thesis, we present an approach which uses machine learning to reduce the adaptation space in self-adaptive systems. The approach integrates with the feedback loop and selects a subset of the adaptation options that are valid in the current situation. The approach is applied on the simulator of a self-adaptive Internet of Things application which is deployed in KU Leuven, Belgium. We compare our results with a formal model based self-adaptation approach called ActivFORMS. The results show that on average the adaptation space is reduced by 81.2% and the adaptation time by 85% compared to ActivFORMS while achieving the same quality guarantees.