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CPS Laboratory-as-a-Service: Enabling Technology for Readily Accessible and Scalable CPS Education
Aniruddha Gokhale. Gautam Biswas, Nilanjan Sarkar
Vanderbilt University Nashville, TN, USA

Shivakumar Sastry Michael Branicky
University of Akron Akron, OH, USA Case Western Reserve Cleveland, OH, USA

CPS Education Workshop, CPSWeek 2013, Philadelphia, PA, USA April 8, 2013

Motivation
• Significant societal challenges (dealing with dwindling natural resources, greenhouse emissions, rising healthcare costs) • Need CPS expertise to address these challenges => need to train the future generation of scientists and challenges • These students must have a balanced CPS education that combines theory with a problem and project-based learning environment for CPS (i.e., practical, hands-on training) • However, practical CPS education is hard due to lack of experimental test beds; these are expensive to build and maintain • Consequences – detrimental to ABET outcomes too
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Solution Approach
• CPS Laboratory-as-a-Service
• A laboratory is virtualized and offered as a service over the web • Our thinking is influenced by cloud computing ideas (e.g., virtualization and software-as-a-service) and software design patterns

Key idea
Virtualized Laboratory Layer
(e.g., Composable Conveyor)

Laboratory-as-a-Service Virtualization Layer
(e.g., Conveyor as a Service)

Physical Infrastructure Layer
(e.g., 2-dimensional grid with robots)

Has the potential to address the limitations with laboratory-based MOOCs

• Decouple the interface (virtual lab) from the implementation (physical lab) so the two can be varied independently [Bridge pattern] • Students are provided access to a logical (virtual) laboratory that provides artifacts from the domain of interest • Physical laboratory can be implemented in any manner as long as it provides an analogous behavior to the logical laboratory • The bridge makes the translation between 3 the logical and physical laboratories

What to Expect in the Poster ?
• Explanation of concepts • Constraints on realizing the concept
• Can the logical and physical layers be arbitrary?
I3 O3

Conveyor System Virtual Lab
I1 O1

I2

O2

• Possible incarnations of LaaS
• In what ways can LaaS be realized? • Sample examples
H1 H2

CPS LaaS Mapping Layer
V1 V2 V3 V4 V5 V6 V7

H3

H4

• Research issues to be handled

H5

2D Grid of Robots Physical Lab

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