CPSWeek plenary speakers
David E. Culler
Title: Enabling a Sustainable Energy Infrastructure - A CPS Grand Challenge
Abstract: From our vantage point of 150 years industrial (r)evolution, as we contemplate how to arrest the rise in global temperature we have the opportunity and the responsibility to ask how we can bring information technology, which has brought such advances in productivity and performance, to bear on efficiency and sustainability. The problems of energy, climate, and sustainability are not crisp, clean technology challenges; they are extremely complex systems challenges. Cyber-Physical Systems challenges. In this talk, we explore how to apply lessons of the Internet, i.e., design principles for building distributed and robust communications infrastructures, to develop an architecture for a cooperative energy network that promotes reduction in use and penetration of renewable sources. We explore how pervasive information can improve energy production, distribution and use. We investigate how design techniques for scalable, power proportional computing infrastructures can translate to the design of a more scalable and flexible electric infrastructure, encouraging efficient use, integrating local or non-dispatchable generation, and managing demand through awareness of energy availability and use over time. Our approach is to develop a cyber overlay on the energy distribution system in its physical manifestations: machine rooms, buildings, neighborhoods and regional grids. A scaled series of experimental energy networks is being constructed to demonstrate monitoring, negotiation protocols, control algorithms and Intelligent Power Switches integrating information and energy flows in a datacenter, building, and campus. We seek to understand broadly how information enables energy efficiencies: through intelligent matching of loads to sources, via various levels of aggregation, power proportional design, and by managing how and when energy is delivered to demand, adapted in time and form to available supply. Bi-directional information exchange is integrated everywhere that power is transferred.
George J. Pappas
University of Pennsylvania
Title: Wireless Control Networks: Modeling, Synthesis, Robustness, Security
Abstract: Control networks are based on time-triggered wireless substrates for industrial automation control, such as the WirelessHART and Honeywell's OneWireless. Control networks have fundamental differences over their sensor network counterparts as they also include actuation and the physical dynamics. A great challenge in such systems is understanding cross-cutting interfaces between computing systems, control systems, sensor networks, and time-triggered communications.
A mathematical framework is first proposed for modeling and analyzing multi-hop control networks that use time-triggered communication protocols. We propose formal models for analyzing robustness of multi-hop control networks, where data is exchanged through a multi-hop communication network subject to disruptions. Time-triggered protocols enable our approach to be compositional and hence addresses the problem of designing scalable scheduling and routing policies for multiple control loops closed on the same multi-hop control network.
We then present a method to stabilize a plant using just a network of resource constrained wireless nodes. As opposed to traditional networked control schemes where the nodes simply route information to and from a centralized controller, our approach treats the wireless network itself as the controller. The key idea is that each node updates its internal state to be a linear combination of the states of the nodes in its neighborhood. We show that this causes the entire network to behave as a linear dynamical system, with sparsity constraints imposed by the network topology. We provide a synthesis procedure to program the network controller and present a scheme that can handle node failures while preserving stability. We also consider the design of an intrusion detection system (IDS), which observes the transmissions of certain nodes in the network and uses that information to recover the plant outputs (for diagnostic purposes) and identify malicious behavior by any of the wireless nodes in the network.
University of Michigan
Title: The Growing Imperative and Transformative Impact of Cyber-Physical Systems
Abstract: The melding of cyber and physical worlds is accelerating. We are transforming static infrastructure into smart spaces that adapt to consumption, growth, and changing environmental needs through the use of networked instrumentation and software control. We are striving to improve quality of life through personalized healthcare and assistive technologies, enabled in part by robust, usable, and trustworthy wearable mobile devices integrated with instrumented environments. Future power grids will be increasingly heterogeneous in energy sources and their locations, and will be efficiently managed through the deployment of intelligent sensor networks and distributed control and decision capabilities. By combining distributed, low-power sensing with communications and control, transformations are possible in a broad array of applications, ranging from intelligent transportation and advanced manufacturing to environmental sustainability and unmanned search and rescue. These kinds of systems that sense and control the physical world are called cyber-physical systems (CPS).
The central theme of this talk is the emergence of cyber-physical systems, and the importance, urgency, and transformational potential of this field of research and practice. Advances in CPS hold the potential to reshape our world with more responsive, precise, and efficient systems that augment human capabilities, work in dangerous or inaccessible environments, provide large-scale, distributed coordination, and enhance societal well-being. The talk will reflect on NSF's decision to launch an initiative focused on CPS and will review the trajectory of the program to date. Through a survey of the inter-agency history of CPS program creation, it will summarize cross-disciplinary connections and comment on gaps, opportunities, and important future directions. The presentation will conclude by providing a perspective on future opportunities for industry-academia, inter-agency, and international partnerships that can increase success and amplify the societal impact of CPS research and education.