The eXchange Calculus (XC): A functional programming language design for distributed collective systems

Distributed collective systems are systems formed by homogeneous dynamic collections of devices acting in a shared environment to pursue a joint task or goal. Typical applications emerge in the context of wireless sensor networks, robot swarms, groups of wearable-augmented people, and computing infrastructures. Programming such systems is notoriously hard, due to requirements of scalability, concurrency, faults, and difficulty in making desired collective behaviour ultimately emerge: ad-hoc languages and mechanisms have been proposed threads like spatial computing, macro-programming, and field-based coordination.