Читать книгу Cyber-physical Systems - Pedro H. J. Nardelli - Страница 12

Two thousand and twenty is a remarkable year, not for the high hopes the number 20‐20 brought, but for the series of critical events that have happened and affected everyone's life. The already fast‐pace trend of digitalization, which had started decades before, has boomed as a consequence of severe mobility restrictions imposed as a response to the COVID‐19 pandemics. The uses (and abuses) of information and communication technologies (ICTs) are firmly established and widespread in society. From dating to food delivery, from reading news to buying e‐books, from watching youtubers to arguing through tweets, the cyber world – before deemed in science fiction literature and movies as either utopian or apocalyptic – is now very concrete and pervasive. Is this concreteness of all those practices involving computers or computer networks (i.e. cyber‐practices) what defines CPSs? In some sense, yes; in many others, no; it all depends on how CPS is conceptualized! At all events, let us move step‐by‐step by looking at nonscientific definitions.

CPS is a term not broadly employed in everyday life. Its usage has a technical origin and is related to digitalization of processes across different sectors so that the term “CPS” has ended up being mostly used by academics in information technology, engineering, practitioners in industry, and managers. Such a broad concept usually leads to misunderstandings so much so that relevant standardization bodies have channeled efforts trying to establish a shared meaning. One remarkable example is the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) located in the United States. NIST has several working groups related to CPS, whose outcomes are presented on a dedicated website [1]. In NIST's own words,

Cyber‐Physical Systems (CPS) comprise interacting digital, analog, physical, and human components engineered for function through integrated physics and logic. These systems will provide the foundation of our critical infrastructure, form the basis of emerging and future smart services, and improve our quality of life in many areas.

Cyber‐physical systems (CPS) will bring advances in personalized health care, emergency response, traffic flow management, and electric power generation and delivery, as well as in many other areas now just being envisioned. CPS comprise interacting digital, analog, physical, and human components engineered for function through integrated physics and logic. Other phrases that you might hear when discussing these and related CPS technologies include:

 Internet of Things (IoT)

 Industrial Internet

 Smart Cities

 Smart Grid

 “Smart” Anything (e.g. Cars, Buildings, Homes, Manufacturing, Hospitals, Appliances)

As a commonplace when trying to determine the meaning of umbrella terms, the definition of CPS proposed by NIST is still too broad and vague (and excessively utopian) to become susceptible of scientific inquiry. On the other hand, such a definition offers us a starting point, which can be seen as the raw material of our theoretical investigation. A careful reading of the NIST text indicates the key common features of the diverse list of CPSs:

 There are physical processes that can be digitalized with sensors or measuring devices;

 These data can be processed and communicated to provide information of such processes;

 These informative data are the basis for decisions (either by humans or by machines) of possible actions that are capable of creating “smartness” in the CPS;

 CPSs are designed to intervene (improve) different concrete processes of our daily lives; therefore, they affect and are affected by different aspects of society.

Figure 1.1 Illustration of a CPS. Sensors measure physical processes, whose data are transmitted through a communication network. These data are then processed to support decisions related to the physical process by either a human operator or an expert system.

These points indicate generalities of CPSs, as illustrated in Figure 1.1. In most of the cases, though, they are only implicitly considered when particular solutions are analyzed and/or designed. As a matter of fact, specific CPSs do exist in the real world without the systematization to be proposed in this book. So, there is an apparent paradox here: on the one hand, we would like to build a scientific theory for CPSs in general; on the other hand, we see real deployments of particular CPSs that do not use such a theory. The next section will be devoted to resolve this contradiction by explaining the reasons why a general theory for CPS is necessary while practical solutions do indeed exist.