Software Center: Modeling and Analyzing Cyber-Physical Systems

Description of the project

Cyber-Physical Systems (CPSs) are everywhere and are usually used in safety-critical applications. Building safe and secure cyber-physical systems are challenging. They are concurrent, distributed and timed software systems interacting with the physical world, bringing in the challenges of both world and their interface.

To build dependable CPSs we need to be able to have different techniques for thorough analysis. There is a wide range of analysis techniques, including testing, simulation, assertion check, lightweight formal verification, and statistical model checking. Building different models of the system, in various levels of abstraction, helps in managing the complexity of analyzing cyber-physical systems and systems of systems. It also helps in managing changes in the architecture design. More abstract models can better show how changes in one component may have a propagating effect on other components.

We will focus on modeling and analyzing event-based asynchronous autonomous systems for safety assurance, performance evaluation, and optimization. The domain can be collaborating autonomous machines, collaborating agents, intelligent factories, or event-based distributed programs executing on different network nodes to accomplish a certain goal.

The project covers different dimensions in building Cyber-Physical and Autonomous Systems, including designing new models and languages for the timed and hybrid systems, new processes, and frameworks for building dependable CPSs and autonomous systems, new techniques and theories for formal verification and analysis.