Toward social services based on cyber physical systems

Abstract

Cyber physical system (CPS) is a general computation concept, in which “Computers (Cyber world)” and “Real world” are integrated via computer networks. In a cyber physical system, there is a loop structure of “observation,” “processing” and “feedback” in the real world: (i) various kinds of data are acquired from our real world using various sensors; (ii) then those data are transferred to computers, or cyber world, and are processed and analyzed; (iii) the analyzed results are fed back to the real world and the real world are modified according to the feedback. Based on this loop structure, the real world is changed, or adjusted. The concept of cyber physical system is well suited for the framework of various IT-based social services, and, in this chapter, we present our research project applying the CPS to social services, especially to an energy management problem, which is one of the most crucial issues for our future society.