Computers that automatically heal and manage themselves may be reminiscent of the villainous "Hal" that turns on its human programmers in "2001: A Space Odyssey."

But researchers say "autonomous" computers will be key in the future as businesses and other organizations increasingly rely on the Internet to manage their data and operations.

Georgia Tech and Ohio State University are planning today to announce a partnership with IBM Corp. researchers to develop new technologies to advance autonomous computing on the Internet.

Specifically, the researchers will focus on "cloud computing" initiatives, which combine the resources of computers in different locations using the Internet.

With cloud computing, a company or organization can use the Internet to split its workload among data centers in different parts of the world, or even outsource some to third parties.

Google, Hewlett-Packard, Amazon.com and other companies have launched cloud computing initiatives.

At the same time, Georgia, Ohio and Texas have emerged as major hot spots for back-office data centers in recent years.

One of the problems with cloud computing, though, is managing thousands of disparate computers around the globe and making sure they work how they're supposed to, when they're supposed to.

"The scale becomes impossible for a human to keep track," said Georgia Tech professor Karsten Schwan, who directs the school's Center for Experimental Research in Computer Systems.

That's where autonomous computing comes in.

Named after the body's central nervous system, autonomous computing systems can react and make decisions on their own.

But that's not as sinister as it may sound, researchers say.

One goal of researchers is to figure out ways to let computer data centers automatically call in more resources from other data centers when there's a spike in Web traffic, for instance.

Another goal is to design computers that can automatically shift their workloads to increase efficiency or save energy.

When the temperature reaches a certain level in Atlanta, for instance, a company's data-processing work could be automatically shifted to a data center in Ohio, where it might be cooler and less air conditioning is needed, Schwan explained.

Through the partnership, Georgia Tech and Ohio State will link IBM-powered data centers at either university, creating a "test bed" that can be used to develop new autonomic technologies.

Finding ways to make computing more efficient is IBM's primary goal in the partnership, said Matt Ellis, vice president of autonomic computing at the company.

Often, Ellis explained, a company's computer servers might run at only 20 percent to 30 percent of capacity — even though the company is paying to power and cool them all the time.

With autonomous cloud computing, that excess computing capacity could be automatically utilized by other departments within the same company — regardless of location — or even outsourced to other companies that would pay a fee to use it.

Management of those computing resources would be handled automatically, without human intervention.

As part of its contribution, IBM is donating servers to Georgia Tech and Ohio State.