Cyber-physical systems: Opportunities, challenges and (Some) solutions

Abstract

The notion of Cyber-Physical Systems (CPS) has recently been introduced. The term describes the integration of information and computation technologies (ICT) with real, physical objects. In this chapter, we motivate work in this new area by presenting the large set of opportunities resulting from this integration. However, this requires coping with a number of challenges which we do also include in this chapter. The final main section of this chapter comprises solutions which demonstrate that it is feasible to address the challenges and find solutions, even though a major amount of additional work is required.