Pennsylvania State University

This project is focused on the fundamental research in establishing a foundational framework towards the development of an autonomous Cyber-Physical System (CPS) through distributed computation in a Networked Control Systems (NCS) paradigm. Specific attention is focused on an application where the computational, and communication challenges are unique due to the sheer dimensionality of the physical system. An example of such CPS is the smart power grid, which includes large-scale deployment of distributed and networked Phasor Measurement Units (PMUs) and wind energy resources.

Equipment operation represents one of the most dangerous tasks on a construction sites and accidents related to such operation often result in death and property damage on the construction site and the surrounding area. Such accidents can also cause considerable delays and disruption, and negatively impact the efficiency of operations. This Cyber Physical System (CPS) research project will conduct research to improve the safety and efficiency of cranes by integrating advances in robotics, computer vision, and construction management.

The proposed research focuses on innovation in the area of detection and separation of anomaly in sensory data used for real time monitoring and control of cyber-physical systems (CPS). In this work, bulk power grid is considered as an example CPS, which is a critical infrastructure of our nation. The problem of spurious or maliciously injected sensor data originating from cyber-attacks is very important, because it can seriously jeopardize the monitoring and stabilization controls of power grids. This can lead to system-wide blackouts and cost our economy billions of dollars.