Next-generation Cyber-physical Systems Research Articles

What to consider at the development of educational programs and courses about next-generation cyber-physical systems?

Abstract We live in an age in which new things are emerging faster that their deep understanding. This statement in particularly applies to doing research and educating university students concerning next generation cyber-physical systems (NG-CPSs). The fast evolution of this system paradigm would have expected a rapid and comprehensive paradigmatic change in research and education concerning this family of systems. However, this has not happened yet. Seeking for a sufficing explanation, this paper reviews the current literature and makes an attempt to cast light on the most significant recent developments in the field of NG-CPSs. The main assumptions of the authors are that research and education should appear in harmony in academic knowledge acquisition and distribution processes, and that academic education of NG-CPSs should be organized and conducted according to a defendable future vision. Combining the results of a broadly-based study of the literature with prognostic critical thinking and personal experiences, this review-based position paper first discusses the current socio-techno-scientific environment, the involved stakeholders, and the demands and two approaches of truly systems-oriented education. Then, it concentrates on the recognized limitations of mono- and interdisciplinary research, and on supradisciplinary approach and transdisciplinary knowledge generation for NG-CPSs. As main contributions, the paper (i) identifies and analyzes the latest theoretical, engineering, and technological developments, (ii) reveals the major trends and their presumably significant implications, (iii) presents a number of thought-provoking findings and makes propositions about the desirable actions.

Deriving Manageable Transdisciplinary Research Models for Complicated Problematics Associated with Next-Generation Cyber-Physical Systems: Part 2 - Elaboration and Deployment

This second Part of the paper (i) develops a detailed procedural model for handling complicated research problematics, (ii) transfers the procedural framework into a scenario of processing steps, (iii) demonstrates the deployment of the procedural scenario in a sample case, and (iv) addresses some important issues of research model development for supradisciplinary research. First, the framework called Holistic Systematic Combinatorial Scoping (HSCS) is introduced that comprises 21 subsequent activity steps. To illustrate the practical application of the HSCS framework, a demonstrative case study of preventing frequently occurring accidents at an uncontrolled intersection is presented. This case-study explains how the HSCS framework can facilitate (i) semantic capturing and rendering of complicated research problematics, (ii) scoping the overall research problematics and constructing definitive research problematics, and (iii) deriving a manageable research model of definitive research problematics. Further research intends to test the methodology by transdisciplinary research collectives and other CPSs related problematics.

2024/00254 Deriving manageable research models for complicated problematics associated with next-generation cyber-physical systems

There are many large-scale, transdisciplinary research problematics associated with next-generation cyber-physical systems, which are difficult to capture, analyze, and transfer into sharable research models. This two-part paper is intended to contribute to a better understanding and to provide a systematic approach to describing, scoping, and specifying manageable contents for transdisciplinary research models. Part 1 of the paper analyzes the essence and the interplays of the most important current trends, and creates a robust theoretical and methodological foundation for capturing and scoping research problematics associated with the evolving paradigm of cyber-physical systems. The elaboration and deployment of the proposed approach are discussed in detail in Part 2. Besides the overall procedural framework of the proposed holistic systematic combinational breakdown, all steps are explained and exemplified in an illustrative real-life example. The discussion in both Parts concludes with a number of propositions and further research opportunities concerning the theoretical and methodological foundations.

Designing next-generation cyber-physical systems: Why is it an issue?

Cyber-physical systems (CPSs) are seen as one of the tangible results of the convergence of advanced information technology, nanotechnology, biotechnology, cognitive science, and social science in addition to conventional systems science, engineering, and technologies. Designing next-generation cyber-physical systems (NG-CPSs) is a challenging matter for abundant reasons. It is not possible to consider all reasons and to address their interplays simultaneously in one paper. Therefore, this position paper elaborates only on a selected number of topical issues and influential factors. The author claims that the shift of the paradigm of CPSs and the uncertainty related to the paradigmatic systems features of NG-CPSs are among the primary reasons. Since the future of CPSs will be influenced strongly by their intellectualization, adaptation/evolution, and automation, these aspects are also addressed. It is argued that interaction and cooperation with NG-CPSs should be seen from a multi-dimensional perspective and that socialization of NG-CPSs needs more attention in research. The need for aggregation, management, and exploitation of the growing amount of synthetic systems knowledge produced by smart CPSs is seen by the author as an important emerging concern.

Seeing the Past, Planning the Future: Proudly Celebrating 25 Years of Assisting the Convergence of Process Sciences and Design Science

This Extended Editorial has been compiled by the members of the Editorial Board to celebrate the 25th anniversary of the establishment of the Journal of Integrated Design and Process Science, which operates as the Transactions of the Society for Process and Design Science. The paper divides in three parts. The first part provides a detailed overview of the preliminaries, the objectives, and the periods of operation. It also includes a summary of the current application-orientated professional fields of interests, which are: (i) convergence mechanisms of creative scientific disciplines, (ii) convergence of artificial intelligence, team and health science, (iii) convergence concerning next-generation cyber-physical systems, and (iv) convergence in design and engineering education. The second part includes invited papers, which exemplify domains within the four fields of interest, and also represent good examples of science communication. Short synopses of the contents of these representative papers are included. The third part takes the major changes in scientific research and the academic publication arena into consideration, circumscribes the mission and vision as formulated by the current Editorial Board, and elaborates on the planned strategic exploration and utilization domains of interest.

Double Deep Q-Network Next-Generation Cyber-Physical Systems: A Reinforcement Learning-Enabled Anomaly Detection Framework for Next-Generation Cyber-Physical Systems

In this work, we considered the problem of anomaly detection in next-generation cyber-physical systems (NG-CPS). For this, we used a double deep Q-network-enabled framework, where an agent was trained to detect anomalies in the traffic that does not match the behavior of the legitimate traffic at the end side. Furthermore, the proposed paradigm recognizes known and unknown anomalies by directly engaging with a simulation environment. Given that, it progressively develops its interpretation of anomalies to encompass new, previously unrecognized classes of anomalies by proactively exploring probable anomalies in data that have not been labeled. The method achieves this by concurrently optimizing the use of a limited amount of labeled abnormality data for better understanding (exploitation) and the identification of infrequent, unlabeled anomalies (exploration). During analysis, we observed that the proposed model achieves significant results in the context of average and greedy catching of anomalies in the presence of comparative models.

Q-Soft: QoS-Aware Traffic Forwarding in Software-Defined Cyber–Physical Systems

The next-generation cyber–physical systems (CPSs) with heterogeneous applications have diverse Quality-of-Service (QoS) requirements in terms of throughput, end-to-end latency, and packet drop reliability. To meet such diverse QoS requirements, in this article, we propose a QoS-aware traffic forwarding scheme in software-defined CPS. The proposed scheme is presented as a two-stage optimization framework to minimize the associated costs in traffic forwarding. In the first stage, we aim to minimize the required number of “candidate” switches for a given network to minimize network deployment costs. In the second stage, we design a comprehensive cost function considering end-to-end delay, flow-rule utilization, and link utilization in the network. Based on the designed cost function, we formulate another optimization problem for optimal traffic forwarding (OTF). As solving OTF is NP-hard, we propose an efficient greedy-heuristic approach to solve the problem while considering application-specific QoS requirements. Further, we propose a packet-tagging method to assist the controller in mitigating rule congestion at the software-defined networking devices, and hence improve the overall network performance. Extensive results show that the proposed scheme minimizes the network delay and QoS-violated flows by up to 50% and 90%, respectively, compared to the state-of-the-art schemes.

SPHERE: A Multi-SoC Architecture for Next-Generation Cyber-Physical Systems Based on Heterogeneous Platforms

This paper presents SPHERE, a project aimed at the realization of an integrated framework to abstract the hardware complexity of interconnected, modern system-on-chips (SoC) and simplify the management of their heterogeneous computational resources. The SPHERE framework leverages hypervisor technology to virtualize computational resources and isolate the behavior of different subsystems running on the same platform, while providing safety, security, and real-time communication mechanisms. The main challenges addressed by SPHERE are discussed in the paper along with a set of new technologies developed in the context of the project. They include isolation mechanisms for mixed-criticality applications, predictable I/O virtualization, the management of time-sensitive networks with heterogeneous traffic flows, and the management of field-programmable gate arrays (FPGA) to provide efficient implementations for cryptography modules, as well as hardware acceleration for deep neural networks. The SPHERE architecture is validated through an autonomous driving use-case.

Cognitively Inspired Cyber Physical Systems Design through Brain Signal Analysis and Decoding

Cybernetics, or the study of control and communication, informs the design, modelling, and characterization of cyber-physical systems. In order to construct functional cyber-physical systems in the actual world, the thesis presents a unique method for analysing and decoding brain signals involved in cognitive processes. The goal of this research is to create and evaluate next-generation cyber-physical systems that, when connected to a human brain via a brain-computer (BCI) interface, can read the human brain's neural code and act as smart tools in fields like medicine, gaming, affective computing, and the study of subjective creativity. The non-invasive examination of human memory for the potential early prediction of memory-related disorders like dementia and prosopagnosia is one example of the healthcare application. The use of brain-computer interfaces to simulate the skills of human game trainers for the purpose of robotic game instruction is also discussed. Due to a lack of qualified individuals and the inherent monotony of the work, it is essential that human game trainers be replaced by robots. Using the predicted brain-connectivity (anticipated signalling routes) between active brain lobes/regions, affective computing apps attempt to identify human emotional states. A network study of human emotions has potential for use in psychotherapy. The implementation of a creativity test is crucial for solving issues related to scientific creativity by autonomously detecting subjective creativity from the brain's reaction to memory-generated stimuli.

Resilience through Learning in Multi-Agent Cyber-Physical Systems

The paper contributes to the design of secure and resilient supervisory Cyber-Physical Systems (CPS) through learning. The reported approach involves the inclusion of learning modules in each of the supervised agents, and considers a scenario where the system's coordinator privately transmits to individual agents their action plans in the form of symbolic strings. Each agent's plans belong in some particular class of (subregular) languages which is identifiable in the limit from positive data. With knowledge of the class of languages their plans belong to, agents can observe their coordinator's instructions and utilize the Grammatical Inference modules to identify the behavior specified for them. From that, they can then work collectively to infer the executive function of their supervisor. The paper proves that in cases where the coordinator fails, or communication to subordinates is disrupted, agents are able not only to maintain functional capacity but also to recover normalcy of operation by reconstructing their coordinator. Guaranteeing normalcy recovery in supervisory CPSs is critical in cases of a catastrophic failure or malicious attack, and is important for the design of next-generation Cyber-Physical Systems.

Challenges in Engineering Cyber-Physical Systems

To successfully make the transition from traditional physical products to next-generation cyber-physical systems, many manufacturers will have to reinvent their innovation and development processes and take a user-centric engineering approach.