Studies in Computational Intelligence, Volume 391, © Springer-Verlag 2011 The original publication is available at www.springerlink.com. Evolution of Verification Techniques by Increasing Autonomy of Cooperating Agents

Abstract. As system parts are becoming increasingly decoupled, gaining at the same time in terms of local autonomy, this article elaborates on the effects this trend has on verification and validation techniques. Both qualitative approaches to fault detection and quantitative approaches to reliability assessment are analyzed in the light of their evolution to adapt to the increasing decentralization and auton-omy of modern ‘systems of systems’. 1