A File System Abstraction for Sense and Respond Systems

TL;DR

This paper introduces a flexible file system abstraction for sense-and-respond systems, enabling multiple views and high-level programming to address heterogeneity and resource constraints.

Contribution

It proposes a novel filesystem-based abstraction inspired by Plan 9, supporting multiple views and facilitating high-level programming of complex sense-and-respond networks.

Findings

Supports multiple system views via filesystem namespaces

Enables high-level network programming and resource-efficient planning

Current implementation demonstrates feasibility

Abstract

The heterogeneity and resource constraints of sense-and-respond systems pose significant challenges to system and application development. In this paper, we present a flexible, intuitive file system abstraction for organizing and managing sense-and-respond systems based on the Plan 9 design principles. A key feature of this abstraction is the ability to support multiple views of the system via filesystem namespaces. Constructed logical views present an application-specific representation of the network, thus enabling high-level programming of the network. Concurrently, structural views of the network enable resource-efficient planning and execution of tasks. We present and motivate the design using several examples, outline research challenges and our research plan to address them, and describe the current state of implementation.