[Pl-seminar] Semantics Seminar Schedule

[Mitchell Wand]

NU Programming Languages Seminar
Wednesday, March 26, 2008
11:45am-1:30pm
Room 366 WVH (http://www.ccs.neu.edu/home/wand/directions.html)

Spatial Computing in Proto
Jonathan Bachrach, MIT CSAIL

ABSTRACT

The computational landscape is drastically changing.  Processing,
sensing, communication, and actuation are now affordable and embeddable,
allowing us to manufacture myriads of devices that can be spread through
space and placed in the world.  The catch is that in order to
manufacture these devices economically in bulk, we must accept faults,
inaccuracies, and communication delays.  If we were to be able to
robustly harness these devices, we could economically develop systems
with unparalleled power, grace, fidelity, and pervasiveness.  Example
spatial computing domains are sensor networks, smart materials, swarm
robotics, biofilms, and modular robotics, to name a few.  Unfortunately,
traditional engineering approaches do not apply, and we must rethink our
computing models, languages, and practices.  Typical solutions entangle
robustness with coordination, producing applications that do not scale
well and modules that do not compose well nor map easily over to other
application domains.  We offer an alternate approach whereby the
programmer controls a single virtual _spatial computer_ which fills
the environment space. The computations on this spatial computer are
actually performed by a large number of locally-interacting individual
devices. This abstracts the actual computational hardware behind the
spatial computer interface, and allows the programmer to focus on a
single model of global computation.  We achieve this abstraction with
two components: a language that embodies continuous space and time
semantics and a runtime library that implements these semantics
approximately.  In this talk, I will introduce our language, called
Proto, using examples from sensor networks, and hint at the generality
of the approach, using examples from modular and swarm robotics.

BIO

Jonathan Bachrach is a research scientist at the MIT Computer Science
and Artificial Intelligence Lab (CSAIL) who researches programming
languages, spatial computing, and robotics.  Before MIT, he held
postdocs at Stanford and UC Berkeley, was a researcher at IRCAM in
Paris, developing new musical platforms, and a principal software
engineer at Harlequin Inc (RIP), working on a compiler and runtime for
the Dylan programming language.  He studied cognitive science,
computer science, and visual arts, receiving a B.S. degree from the
University of California at San Diego and MS and PhD degrees from the
University of Massachusetts at Amherst.

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Upcoming Events:

# Wed 4/2 open
# Wed 4/9 open
# Wed 4/16 Nikolaos Papaspyrou: Continuations for Prototyping
  Concurrent Languages 

We are otherwise open.  Come give a talk!

--Mitch