Cyber-physical Space Research Articles

Guidance systems: from autonomous directives to legal sensor-bilities

The design of collaborative robotics, such as driver-assisted operations, engineer a potential automation of decision-making predicated on unobtrusive data gathering of human users. This form of ‘somatic surveillance’ (Hayles, Unthought: the power of the cognitive nonconscious. University of Chicago Press, Chicago, 2017, p. 11) increasingly relies on behavioural biometrics and sensory algorithms to verify the physiology of bodies in cabin interiors. Such processes secure cyber-physical space, but also register user capabilities for control that yield data as insured risk. In this technical re-formation of human–machine interactions for control and communication ‘a dissonance of attribution’ (Hancock et al., Proc Natl Acad Sci 116(16):7684, 2019. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1805770115 ) is created between perceptions of phenomena, materials and decision-making. This reconfigures relations not only between humans and machines, objects and subjects, but possibly disrupts attributive functions in the social system of Law. What it requires is shifting a legal accountability for action from a sovereignty of the human to a new materialist account based on a ‘cognitive assemblage’ between physiological data, computation and algorithmic sensing. This paper investigates the function of law as a guidance system to acknowledge this account of sensory and algorithmic computation as autonomous ‘sensing agents’ (Hansen, Feed-forward: on the future of twenty-first-century media. University of Chicago Press, Chicago, 2015) that may be accountable in situations of risk. This assemblage of robotic computation and sensory determination requires a clearer legal differentiation across the current static terminologies of person, property, liability and rights that maintain strict separations of object from subject. To neglect this, we argue, law will solely impute attributions of error to humans despite evidence of operation via mutual control.

Access Management of User and Cyber-Physical Device in DBaaS according to Indian IT Laws using Blockchain

Computing on the cloud has changed the working of mankind in every manner, from storing to fetching every information on the cloud. To protect data on the cloud various access procedures and policies are used such as authentication and authorization. Authentication means the intended user is access data on the cloud and authorization means the user is accessing only that data for which he is allowed. The intended user now also includes Cyber-Physical Devices. Cyber-Physical Devices share data between them, fetch data from cloud. Cloud data is managed by employees of cloud Companies. Persons sitting on the cloud managing companies data is always doubtful as so many insider attacks have happened in the past affecting the company Image in the market. Data Related to Cyber-Physical Space may come under Insider attack. Companies managing user data are also liable to protect user data from any type of attack under various sections of the Indian IT act. Work in this paper has proposed blockchain as a possible solution to track the activities of employees managing cloud. Employee authentication and authorization are managed through the blockchain server. User authentication related data is stored in blockchain. Authorization rules are written in any Role/Attribute-based access language. These authorization rules stores the data related to user requests allowed access to data in blockchain. Proposed work will help cloud companies to have better control over their employee’s activities, thus help in preventing insider attack on User and Cyber-Physical Devices.

Early validation of cyber–physical space systems via multi-concerns integration

Cyber–physical space systems are engineered systems operating within physical space with design requirements that depend on space, e.g., regarding location or movement behavior. They are built from and depend upon the seamless integration of computation and physical components. Typical examples include systems where software-driven agents such as mobile robots explore space and perform actions to complete particular missions. Design of such a system often depends on multiple concerns expressed by different stakeholders, capturing different aspects of the system. We propose a model-driven approach supporting (a) separation of concerns during design, (b) systematic and semi-automatic integration of separately modeled concerns, and finally (c) early validation via statistical model checking. We evaluate our approach over two different case studies of cyber–physical space systems.

Legal Awareness in a Digital Society

Our perception of reality depends on multiple factors, including the language of communication and the culture adopted by civil society. With the development of digital technologies, the methods for transferring information, traditions and cultural code between participants in public relations have undergone drastic changes. The emergence of the “digital layer” between the human consciousness and the outside world has resulted in a shift in our perception of the world since we now view it through the prism of the digital space. The use of artificial intelligence and global cloud data in the daily life of society requires special consideration. Our interaction with cyberphysical systems has dramatically affected our perception of immediate reality. The synthesis of human cognition and artificial intelligence is leading to an amalgamation of material and cyberphysical spaces, as a result of which objects of the digital world acquire material value, whereas material objects (works of art, music, books, etc.) get transformed into a digital code. This article examines societal trends in the development of digital technologies at the fourth stage of the industrial revolution (Industry 4.0). Here, we review the possible interpretations of the concept of “digital relations” and characterize the participants in such relations. Furthermore, we analyze the factors affecting the legal awareness of an individual and identify the essential characteristics of cognition in a digital society. We also consider the challenges currently facing the State and evaluate the prospects for the development and regulation of digital relations.

A topology and risk-aware access control framework for cyber-physical space

Cyber-physical space is a spatial environment that integrates the cyber world and the physical world, aiming to provide an intelligent environment for users to conduct their day-to-day activities. The interplay between the cyber space and physical space proposes specific security requirements that are not captured by traditional access control frameworks. On one hand, the security of the physical space and the cyber space should be both concerned in the cyber-physical space. On the other hand, the bad results caused by failure in providing secure policy enforcement may directly affect the controlled physical world. In this paper, we propose an effective access control framework for the cyber-physical space. Firstly, a topology-aware access control (TAAC) model is proposed. It can express the cyber access control, the physical access control, and the interaction access control simultaneously. Secondly, a risk assessment approach is proposed for the policy enforcement phase. It is used to evaluate the user behavior and ensures that the suspicious behaviors executed by authorized users can be handled correctly. Thirdly, we propose a role activation algorithm to ensure that the objects are accessed only by legal and honest users. Finally, we evaluate our approach by using an illustrative example and the performance analysis. The results demonstrate the feasibility of our approach.

Control Strategies for Crowd Emotional Contagion Coupling the Virtual and Physical Cyberspace in Emergencies

Crowd emotional contagion occurs in both virtual and physical cyberspace at the same time. To realistically simulate the process of crowd emotional contagion, the influences of virtual cyberspace and physical cyberspace should be considered comprehensively. In addition, control strategies significantly affect the speed and scale of emotional contagion in a crowd. However, control strategies described by existing studies are inaccurate since few of them consider both physical and virtual cyberspace to jointly study the influence of control strategies on crowd emotional contagion. To achieve more accurate control, we first establish a novel personalized emotional contagion computational (NP-ECC) model to study control strategies of crowd emotional contagion coupling the physical and virtual cyberspace. Second, we construct a personalized BA scale-free network to calculate the phase transition threshold of the proposed NP-ECC model more accurately. Finally, we propose two algorithms, control strategies-BA (CS-BA) and threshold-BA (T-BA), to verify the stability of the NP-ECC model and the accuracy of the phase transition threshold, respectively. The experimental results show that our method can better control the speed and scale of crowd emotional contagion and thus can provide guidance for a large-scale crowd evacuation.

Specification and verification of a topology-aware access control model for cyber-physical space

The cyber-physical space is a spatial environment that integrates the cyber and physical worlds to provide an intelligent environment for users to conduct their day-to-day activities. Mobile users and mobile objects are ubiquitous in this space, thereby exerting tremendous pressure on its security model. This model must ensure that both cyber and physical objects are always handled securely in this dynamic environment. In this paper, we propose a systematic solution to be able to specify security policies of the cyber-physical space and ensure that security requirements hold in these policies. We first formulate a topology configuration model to capture the topology characteristics of the cyber and physical worlds. Then, based on this model, a Topology-Aware Cyber- Physical Access Control model (TA-CPAC) is proposed, which can ensure the security of the cyber and physical worlds at the same time by adjusting permission assignment dynamically. Then, the topology configuration and TA-CPAC models are formalized by bigraphs and Bigraph Reactive System (BRS), respectively, allowing us to use model checking to rationalize the consequences of the evolution of topological configurations on the satisfaction of security requirements. Finally, a case study on a building automation access control system is conducted to evaluate the effectiveness of the proposed approach.

Why Are Carbon-Based Materials Important in Civilization Progress and Especially in the Industry 4.0 Stage of the Industrial Revolution

This article presents a comprehensive literature study showing that, starting from the emergence of the species of homo sapiens, the progress of human civilization is strongly dependent on the development of materials, and over time this is mainly development of engineering materials and the accompanying increase in productive forces. There is no close correlation between changes, and especially between the development of the brain and technologies sequentially controlled by humans. The materials science appeared as an independent branch of knowledge only in the late 1950s. Technical aspects of the product launch on the market relate to several technical aspects; engineering design is a significant conceptual phase of this activity, and within it, the material design. The expected functional properties of the product will be assured only if the right expected material is used and is produced in a suitably selected expected technological process that will provide both the expected shape and other geometric features of the product, including assembly and the expected structure of the material, ensuring the expected mechanical, physical, and chemical properties of the material, the use of which ensures the expected application of the product. The given rule defines the paradigm of contemporary materials science and engineering. Without the use of engineering materials and without the development of manufacturing processes, it is impossible to manufacture any product and make it available to consumers. The material design process in history has gone through a long period of changes. Initially, for millions of years and almost a century ago, materials were selected based on the trial and error method, which is stage Materials 1.0. Currently, about 80 % of work in the field of engineering materials development and material design is carried out in accordance with the Materials 2.0 protocol. The Materials 2.0 protocol includes more systematic material research, ranging from conceptualization, systematic laboratory experiments to verify the idea, prototyping in the laboratory and real conditions, and testing and validating prototypes and life cycle assessment to use the results of research in product production. Materials 3.0 use computational materials science materials, and materials are computationally designed with a target functionality. Only the idea of Materials 4.0 overcomes human limitations in applying existing knowledge about the theory of materials, processing, and properties through the use of cyber-physical space. In manufacturing processes generally after the era of water and steam and mass production based on the division of labor with the use of electricity, and then the use of electronics and information technology for the automation of production processes, there is a dynamic use of cyber-physical systems, the Internet of objects, machine learning, artificial intelligence, and virtual reality, currently guaranteeing the production progress at the stage of the Industry 4.0 industrial revolution. So far, nine technologies have been designated as determining the change in industrial production at the Industry 4.0 stage. According to the authors of this article, it is necessary to augment this list by manufacturing processes and engineering materials as well as living and bioengineering machines; therefore, in total, there will be 12 technologies determining the changes in production in the Industry 4.0 stage. Omitting these issues would make it impossible to manufacture any products available on the market, and the idea of Industry 4.0 presented would be incomplete. The importance of carbon-based materials is also presented, and several results of our own research on various materials are presented, with an indication of application possibilities.

Ensuring Cybersecure Telemetry and Telecommand in Small Satellites: Recent Trends and Empirical Propositions

With the advent of a large number of small satellites in the orbit performing critical missions, securing ground/space infrastructure against cyberattacks has become a blazing issue amongst operators and policymakers. In this paper, we provide up-to-date analysis on the recent advances, existing, and future trends in small satellite cybersecurity, considering the advent of new policies and architectures, implementation of modern cryptographic algorithms, and prospects of quantum cryptographic techniques. We explore the performance of selected encryption schemes in the cyberphysical space of small satellites, using throughput, memory footprint, security, and energy consumption as key performance metrics. We propose an open-source cybersecurity analysis platform in the context of small satellites and have found out that the 128 bit Advanced Encryption Standard (AES) is most suitable for securing small satellite telemetry/telecommand channel. We have also investigated possibilities of telemetry compression, proposing a modified Consultative Committee for Space Data Systems telemetry/telecommand packet format to incorporate compression and encryption, and have found simple Huffman coding to be suitable. In order to improve the resilience of ground infrastructure against cyberattacks, a redundant array of ground station elements is recommended to be architected.

Multi-Constraint Optimized Planning of Tasks on Virtualized-Service Pool for Mission-Oriented Swarm Intelligent Systems

With the emergence of swarm intelligent systems, especially the swarming of aircraft and ground vehicles, cooperation in multiple dimensions has becoming one of the great challenges. How to dynamically schedule the resources within a swarm intelligent system and optimize the execution of tasks are all vital aspects for such systems. Focusing on this topic, in this paper, one new task planning mechanism with multiple constraints is proposed to solve such dynamic programming problems. Concretely, several fundamental models, covering three-level task models and resource-service pool models, are put forward and defined first. Considering the limitations of swarm systems running within complicated cyber-physical space, multi-dimension constraints for tasks scheduling and execution are further modeled and established. On this basis, we mapped this planning problem to an optimization searching problem, and then proposed a Genetic-Algorithm-based mechanism. All these works have been verified with simulated cooperation scenes. Experimental results show that this new mechanism is efficient to solve such resource-related and mission-oriented cooperation problems in complicated environments.

Method of synthetic data generation and architecture of face recognition system for interaction with robots in cyberphysical space

Method of synthetic data generation and architecture of face recognition system for interaction with robots in cyberphysical space

What drives the capacity to integrate Industry 4.0 technologies? Evidence from European R&D projects

ABSTRACTIndustry 4.0 is a word that identifies innovative technologies, processes and products, typical of a Fourth Industrial Revolution characterised by a massive and pervasive use of interdependent digital technologies and the rise of cyber-physical spaces or smart factories. European Member States are committed to adapting their innovation systems in order to be able to benefit from Industry 4.0 and the European Commission is also facing the challenge of putting less advanced regions in a position to do so. However, little is known about the drivers of the capacity to compete in the domain of Industry 4.0 by integrating different enabling technologies at the regional level. On the basis of data on regional participation in the 7th European Framework Programme for research and technological development, we investigate the factors underlying the capacity to compete by integrating Industry 4.0 enabling technologies. The evidence shows that EU funding, centrality in research networks and interregional cooperation all play a significant role in technology integration, and these results have important policy implications.

A topology-aware access control model for collaborative cyber-physical spaces: Specification and verification

In collaborative environment, distributed multiple cyber-physical spaces interoperate with each other aiming to provide an intelligent spatial environment for their users to conduct their collaborative activities. Subjects and objects roam in the physical and cyber spaces among domains to support the completion of the activities. These dynamic behaviors bring great challenges to security issue. The actions of roaming subjects and roaming objects need to be specified and checked against security requirements of constituent domains. However, the existing inter-domain access control models was proposed for the traditional information system and focus on the cyber security. They cannot deal with the intricacies of cross-domain access requests in cyber-physical spaces. In this paper, we propose a formal inter-domain model to specify cyber-physical access control policies and a model checking approach to ensure security requirements hold in these policies. We first present a formal definition of the topology configuration to capture the environment characteristics of the cyber-physical spaces. It provides important contextual information for the access control system. Then, based on topology attributes defined in the topology configuration, a topology-aware inter-domain access control model TA-CPAC is proposed. It can adjust the permission assignment adaptively to react to the behaviors changes of subjects and objects. Next, the topology configuration and TA-CPAC model are formalized by the use of bigraphs and bigraphs reactive systems respectively, which allows us to utilize the model checking technology to reason about that whether the behaviors of roaming subjects and objects satisfy security requirements of all constituent domains. Finally, the effectiveness of our approach is evaluated by a collaborative scenario in a smart city.

Design and Implementation of Decoupled IoT Application Store: A Novel Prototype for Virtual Objects Sharing and Discovery

The internet of things (IoT) has been growing towards the conception of a cyber-physical space in which physical things could be discovered, examined, activated, interlinked, and updated, for the realization of possible interactions in both virtual and physical space. The fundamental idea of IoT is the concept of a virtual object, which is regarded as the digital equivalent of a physical entity. Currently, in every IoT platform, the use of virtual objects has become a vital component. These virtual objects form building blocks of IoT applications, support the discovery of services, nurture the production of complex applications, foster the objects’ energy and power management efficiency, as well as address heterogeneity and scalability issues. Idea sharing and reusing are widesplread, and different solutions are built for this purpose to share applications or their components with similar domains to avoid duplication of efforts. In this paper, we design and implement a cloud-centric IoT application store that serves a purpose for hosting virtual objects of different IoT domains so that technology tinkerers can consume them and integrate them to build IoT applications. The proposed system is different than existing IoT marketplaces in the sense that they provide full-fledged IoT applications which include software and hardware that users can plug and play. The application store is aimed to be decoupled and can expose virtual objects of different IoT domains so that similar areas can use them with little or no modification. Moreover, it is also aimed to be modular, scalable, secure and support heterogeneity, which are considered vital attributes of IoT applications. An IoT testbed client application is developed to reuse some of the virtual objects from the proposed application store and to share specialized virtual objects to the proposed system for the use of other clients applications with similar goals. The performance and load of the platform are tested and found to be within an acceptable response time for up to 40 simultaneous users.

Development of Smart Semiconductor Manufacturing: Operations Research and Data Science Perspectives

With advances in information and telecommunication technologies and data-enabled decision making, smart manufacturing can be an essential component of sustainable development. In the era of the smart world, semiconductor industry is one of the few global industries that are in a growth mode to smartness, due to worldwide demand. The important opportunities that can boost the cost reduction of productivity and improve quality in wafer fabrication are based on the simulations of actual environment in Cyber-Physical Space and integrate them with decentralized decision-making systems. However, this integration faced the industry with novel unique challenges. The stream of the data from sensors, robots, and Cyber-Physical Space can aid to make the manufacturing smart. Therefore, it would be an increased need for modeling, optimization, and simulation for the value delivery from manufacturing data. This paper aims to review the success story of smart manufacturing in semiconductor industry with the focus on data-enabled decision making and optimization applications based on operations research and data science perspective. In addition, we will discuss future research directions and new challenges for this industry.

Prospects for it-modernization of accounting: actualization of theory and practice

Information-and-communication and digital information technologies provide an opportunity to intensify processes and introduce modern achievements in the field of computer technology. The determination of the general mechanism for the transformation of accounting systems, control and management, the request to create a single information space provides the need for conceptual studies of the synergistic effect of IT modernization (digitalization) of accounting. The aim of the article is to generalize the existing theoretical base for the transformation of the accounting system in the context of digital modernization of socio-economic relations. It was determined that IT modernization is the subject of focal and integrated public administration. At the same time, digitalization of accounting offers the option of creating a common information and cyber physical business space that surpasses traditional accounting methods, enhances the ability of a book-account to interpret and communicate information faster and more efficiently. The contents and application areas in modern accounting of IT tools and technologies are disclosed, which will translate accounting work into a digital format, modernize the concepts of information processing and transmission. An administrative model of accounting digitalization has been developed taking into account the status, capabilities and shortcomings of the prerequisites for implementation at the enterprise. Actual requirements for an accountant to mobilize both his creative abilities and understanding of information and communication technologies are disclosed. The development of digital competencies is becoming a mandatory requirement for personnel at the modern level of technological and economic development. The elements of the cyberphysical space of the accountant are described in accordance with innovative, formalized, dynamic, information-oriented user-oriented algorithms for actions on IT-modernization of accounting.

Mobile Matrix: Routing under mobility in IoT, IoMT, and Social IoT

The explosive growth of “things” connected to the Internet (Internet of Things, IoT) raises the question of whether existing ready-to-go networking protocols are enough to cover social and mobile IoT’s demands. IoT aims to interconnect static devices attached to some physical infrastructure. However, mobility is a major factor present in everyday life, and naturally the “things” can move around (Internet of Mobile Things, IoMT) and create social ties (Social IoT, SIoT) in the cyber-physical space. In that context, we present Mobile Matrix (μMatrix), a routing protocol that uses hierarchical IPv6 address allocation to perform any-to-any routing and mobility management without changing a node’s address. In this way, device mobility is transparent to the application level favoring IoMT and SIoT implementation and broader adoption. The protocol has low memory footprint, adjustable control message overhead, and it achieves optimal routing path distortion. Moreover, it does not rely on any particular hardware for mobility detection (a key open issue), such as an accelerometer. Instead, it uses a passive mechanism to detect that a device has moved. We present analytic proofs for the computational complexity and efficiency of μMatrix, as well as an evaluation of the protocol through simulations. We evaluate the protocol performance under human and non-human mobility models. For human mobility, we generated mobility traces using Group Regularity Mobility (GRM) Model, setting its parameters based on real human mobility traces. For the non-human mobility, we propose a new mobility model, to which we refer as Cyclical Random Waypoint (CRWP), where nodes move using a simple Random Waypoint and, eventually, return to their initial position. We compared μMatrix with three baseline protocols: Routing Protocol for low-power and lossy networks (RPL), Mobility Management RPL (MMRPL), and Ad hoc On-Demand Distance Vector (AODV). The results show that μMatrix and RPL offer ≈ 99.9% of bottom-up delivery rate, but only μMatrix offer ≥ 95% of top-down traffic in highly dynamic and mobile scenarios, while other protocols ≤ 75%. Moreover, μMatrix uses up to 65% of the routing table while RPL and AODV fulfill theirs in all scenarios, which leads to poor top-down and any-to-any reliability.

Patented intelligence: Cloning human decision models for Industry 4.0

Industry 4.0 is a trend related to smart factories, which are cyber-physical spaces populated and controlled by the collective intelligence for the autonomous and highly flexible manufacturing purposes. Artificial Intelligence (AI) embedded into various planning, production, and management processes in Industry 4.0 must take the initiative and responsibility for making necessary real-time decisions in many cases. In this paper, we suggest the Pi-Mind technology as a compromise between completely human-expert-driven decision-making and AI-driven decision-making. Pi-Mind enables capturing, cloning and patenting essential parameters of the decision models from a particular human expert making these models transparent, proactive and capable of autonomic and fast decision-making simultaneously in many places. The technology facilitates the human impact (due to ubiquitous presence) in smart manufacturing processes and enables human-AI shared responsibility for the consequences of the decisions made. It also benefits from capturing and utilization of the traditionally human creative cognitive capabilities (sometimes intuitive and emotional), which in many cases outperform the rational decision-making. Pi-Mind technology is a set of models, techniques, and tools built on principles of value-based biased decision-making and creative cognitive computing to augment the axioms of decision rationality in industry.

Lakás 4.0 – Intelligens otthonok

To understand “Home 4.0” you must know about the industrial revolutions, specially about the fourth one, which is often called “Industry 4.0”. The automatization process and the mapping of mechanisms and resources in the cyber-physical space are getting more and more popular in the households. From there comes the term in the title. Analysation of the currently used smart home technology was made and a model that simulates real life events with smart home criteria was created. The model is controlled by a central control unit, the front panel and program of which is also created. Important features such as lighting, heating, cooling and security system, fire protection, controlled consumer electronics, sprinklers and motors came true.

Homes of the Future

The industry is being revolutionised again. It is the fourth time, that is why this revolution is often called Fourth Industrial Revolution. One of the definitions of this process says that the aim is to digitalize the machines and resources and those should communicate with each other in the cyber-physical space via sensor networks and mobile communication. This automation process starts to appear in the households. People have the need to own fully automated houses and intelligent homes. In this article you can read about how a house can be intelligent.