Embedded systems
Embedded control systems (ECS) refers to integrations of a computing device with the physical systems. Classically, the computing system implementing the controller is assumed to be the abstraction of a discrete-time difference equation in an ideal way disregarding the limited number of computing resources and the system's vulnerability to attacks. In modern ECS several issues arises when taking the different components' interaction into consideration: mixed-criticality of several physical systems sharing a common computational platform, existence of various kinds of cyber attacks, existence of uncertain delays, etc. Consequently, adaptive control algorithms for resilient and mixed-criticality ECS are urgently needed as ECS applications have become ubiquitous in current societies (autonomous vehicles, smart buildings, robots, etc.)
Hybrid Protocols for Cyber-Physical Systems
With the rapid improvements in communication technology, mobility, flexibility, bandwidth, hardware, and the availability of wireless communication infrastructure, wireless communication has become the central element in most modern technology, including control systems engineering and cyber-physical systems.
Resilience for Cyber-Physical Systems
Control systems are being dominantly cyber-physical in nature. They are becoming more vulnerable to attacks (denial of service, false data injection, jamming, delay, etc.) due to the inherent strong coupling between the cyber (communication) part and the physical dynamical part. Then a CPS needs to be resilient or prepared for and adapt to changing conditions, featured with absorbtion and fast recovery from attacks. This brings new challenges and opportunities as well, to build more efficient system controllers, acheive more accurate monitoring and enable fast recovery. Upgrading traditional adaptive and model-predictive control strategies to ensure a resilient behavior of control systems is of particular interest.