A Cyclic Process Model for Monitoring Mobile Cyber-physical Systems

Basic approaches of mobile cyber-physical systems (CPS) such like cars, trains, aeroplanes or spaceships are parts of our daily life. Mobile CPSs are embedded into a physical environment which is usually harsh and uncertain. Monitoring mobile CPSs is essential to ensure reliability and to avoid damage. Monitoring mobile CPSs presupposes knowledge about the CPS, the physical environment and the system behaviour. Such knowledge needs to be discovered continuously because of continuous changes like wear and tear. Our contribution is the definition of an abstract process cycle for monitoring mobile CPSs. We call this abstract process cycle the Knowledge Discovery Cycle (KDC). Our KDC is based on common characteristics of mobile CPSs and key challenges for monitoring mobile CPSs. We particularly discuss common characteristics and key challenges by means of the German Inter City Express and the International Space Station. Based on this, we examine five overall considerations for monitoring mobile CPSs. Further on, we identify processing steps for our KDC and we associate existing concepts and technologies with the identified processing steps. This involves knowledge discovery in databases, knowledge discovery from data streams and complex event processing.