Cyber-Physical Systems

Introduction

Ragunathan (Raj) Rajkumar, Dionisio de Niz, and Mark Klein

The National Science Foundation defines cyber-physical systems (CPS) as “engineered systems that are built from, and depend upon, the seamless integration of computational algorithms and physical components”—that is, cyber and physical components. In practical terms, this integration means that, to understand CPS behavior, we cannot focus only on the cyber part or only on the physical part. Instead, we need to consider both parts working together. For instance, if we try to verify the behavior of the airbag of a car, it is not enough to ensure that the correct instructions to inflate the airbag are executed when the system detects that a crash is occurring. We also need to ...