The objective of this project is to develop a science of integration for cyber-physical systems (CPS). The proposed research program has three focus areas: (1) foundations, (2) tools and tool architectures, (3) systems/experimental research. The project has pushed along several frontiers towards these overall objectives. In the following, we describe selected accomplishments:
Recent years have seen medical devices go from being monolithic to a collection of integrated systems. Modern medical device systems have thus become a distinct class of cyber-physical systems called Medical Cyber Physical Systems (MCPS), featuring complex and close interaction of sophisticated treatment algorithms with the physical aspects of the system, and especially thepatient whose safety is of the utmost concern.
A paper from Carnegie Mellon University titled "Architectural Abstractions for Hybrid Programs" wins a Distinguished Paper Award at the 18th International Symposium for Component-Based Software Engineering (CBSE), part of the CompArch federated conference series (Component-Based Software Engineering and Software Architecture). You can view the presentation slides here.
Abstract: Developing cyber-physical systems involves multiple engineering domains, e.g., timing, logical correctness, thermal resilience, and mechanical stress. In today's industrial practice, these domains rely on multiple analyses to obtain and verify critical system properties. Domain differences make the analyses abstract away interactions among themselves, potentially invalidating the results. Specifically, one challenge is to ensure that an analysis is never applied to a model that violates the assumptions of the analysis.
Abstract: Modern cyber-physical systems interact closely with continuous physical processes like kinematic movement. Software component frameworks do not provide an explicit way to represent or reason about these processes. Meanwhile, hybrid program models have been successful in proving critical properties of discrete-continuous systems. These programs deal with diverse aspects of a cyber-physical system such as controller decisions, component communication protocols, and mechanical dynamics, requiring several programs to address the variation.
Abstract: Cyber-physical systems (CPS) are heterogeneous, because they tightly couple computation, communication and control along with physical dynamics, which are traditionally considered separately. Without a comprehensive modeling formalism, model-based development of CPS involves using a multitude of models in a variety of formalisms that capture various aspects of the system design, such as software design, networking design, physical models, and protocol design.
