Self-awareness is a broad concept borrowed from cognitive science and psychology that describes the property of a system, which has knowledge of “itself,” based on its own senses and internal models. This knowledge may take different forms, is based on perceptions of both internal and external phenomena, and is essential for being able to anticipate and adapt to unknown situations. Computational self-awareness methods comprise a new promising field that enables an autonomous agent to detect nonstationary conditions, to learn internal models of its environment, and to autonomously adapt its behavior and structure to the contextual tasks. In this talk I will introduce the concept of computational self-awareness, explain its key capabilities and discuss the current state of research and open challenges.

Bernhard Rinner is professor at the Alpen-Adria-Universität Klagenfurt, Austria where he is heading the Pervasive Computing group. He is deputy head of the Institute of Networked and Embedded Systems and serves as vice dean of the Faculty of Technical Sciences from 2022. Before joining Klagenfurt he was with Graz University of Technology and held research positions at the Department of Computer Sciences at the University of Texas at Austin in 1995 and 1998/99. His current research interests include embedded computing, sensor networks multi-robot systems and pervasive computing. Together with partners from four European universities, he has jointly initiated the Erasmus Mundus Joint Doctorate Program on Interactive and Cognitive Environments (ICE). He is senior member of IEEE and member of the board of the Austrian Science Fund.