From Hybrid to Networked Cyber-Physical Systems

Abstract

Networked embedded sensing and control systems are increasingly becoming ubiquitous in applications from manufacturing, chemical processes and autonomous robotic space, air and ground vehicles, to medicine and biology. They offer significant advantages, but present serious challenges to information processing, communication and decision-making. This area, called cyber-physical systems, which has been brought to the forefront primarily because of advances in technology that make it possible to place computational intelligence out of the control room and in the field, is the latest challenge in systems and control, where our quest for higher degrees of autonomy has brought us, over the centuries, from the ancient water clock to autonomous spacecrafts. Our quest for autonomy leads to consideration of increasingly complex systems with ever more demanding performance specifications, and to mathematical representations beyond time-driven continuous linear and nonlinear systems, to event-driven and to hybrid systems; and to interdisciplinary research in areas at the intersection of control, computer science, networking, driven by application needs in physics, chemistry, biology, finance. 

After an introduction to some of the main research and education issues we need to address and a brief description of lessons learned in hybrid systems research, we shall discuss recent methodologies we are currently working on to meet stability and performance specifications in networked control systems, which use passivity, model-based control and intermittent feedback control.