The Rise of Intelligent Cyber-Physical Systems

C O M P U T E R 0 0 1 8 9 1 6 2 / 1 7 / $ 3 3 . 0 0 © 2 0 1 7 I E E E P U B L I S H E D B Y T H E I E E E C O M P U T E R S O C I E T Y D E C E M B E R 2 0 1 7 7 Cyber-physical systems (CPS) are orchestrations of computers, machines, and people working together to achieve goals using computation, communications, and control (CCC) technologies. Although the term CPS was coined only in 2006 by Helen Gill of the National Science Foundation (NSF), the CCC core technologies of CPS have had a rich and long history. Major milestones for CPS include control theory in 1868, wireless telegraphy in 1903, cybernetics feedback in 1948, embedded systems in 1961, software engineering in 1968, and ubiquitous computing in 1988. CPSs have risen from the field of embedded systems to the realm of digital ecosystems and are becoming increasingly intelligent as a result of analytics and machine-learning capabilities being readily available in the cloud and accessible over networks. The advances in the interconnected capabilities of CPSs affect virtually every engineered system and will enable adaptability, scalability, resiliency, safety, security, and usability in future CPSs that will far exceed the systems of today. Over the past two decades, the number of cyber components has grown gradually to the point where CPSs are now software-intensive systems with more and more integrated computing hardware and computational algorithms. In today’s CPS, software dominates all aspects of connecting the physical and cyber worlds by orchestrating the CCC technologies in CPS applications. Consequently, the engineering of high-confidence CPSs has also evolved. The resulting process is neither an extension of traditional engineering nor a straightforward application of software engineering,1 but rather a new systems engineering science. Granting agencies around the world have recognized this problem and initiated large research programs to investigate CPS foundations. A key goal of the NSF CPS research program is to develop the core systems science needed to engineer complex CPSs. The idea is to abstract from specific systems and application domains to reveal fundamental CPS engineering principles. Over the years, engineers have been highly successful in developing models for specific control system applications. Integrating discrete, continuous, and adaptive control as well as deterministic and nondeterministic models are fundamental challenges in dealing with uncertainty The Rise of Intelligent CyberPhysical Systems