Dynamic Distributed Orchestration of Node-RED IoT Workflows Using a Vector Symbolic Architecture

There are a large number of workflow systems designed to work in various scientific domains, including support for the Internet of Things (IoT). One such workflow system is Node-RED, which is designed to bring workflow-based programming to IoT. However, the majority of scientific workflow systems, and specifically systems like Node-RED, are designed to operate in a fixed networked environment, which rely on a central point of coordination in order to manage the workflow. The main focus of the work described in this paper is to investigate means whereby we can migrate Node-RED workflows into a decentralized execution environment, so that such workflows can run on Edge networks, where nodes are extremely transient in nature. In this work, we demonstrate the feasibility of such an approach by showing how we can migrate a Node-RED based traffic congestion detection workflow into a decentralized environment. The detection algorithm is implemented as a set of Web services within Node-RED and we have architected and implemented a system that proxies the centralized Node-RED services using cognitively-aware wrapper services, designed to operate in a decentralized environment. Our cognitive services use a Vector Symbolic Architecture to semantically represent service descriptions and workflows in a way that can be unraveled on the fly without any central point of control. The VSA-based system is capable of parsing Node-RED workflows and migrating them to a decentralized environment for execution; providing a way to use Node-RED as a front-end graphical composition tool for decentralized workflows.