Interfaces in evolving cyber-physical systems-of-systems

Abstract

In the past twenty years the view on how we engineer, operate and evolve independently owned and managed Cyber-Physical Systems (CPSs) in order to realize and optimize complex economical processes has started to change. Advances in telecommunications and automation accompanied by standardization efforts resulted in sophisticated cross-domain information and communication technologies (e.g., the Internet of Things (IoT) [2, 9], elastic processing and storage clouds, Web Services) that allow for the integration of more and more existing and previously technologically isolated CPSs. These legacy systems became cooperating Constituent Systems (CSs) of evolving Cyber-Physical Systems-of-Systems (CPSoSs) and – by their physical and cyber interaction – give rise to new emergent services that cannot be realized by any single or small number of CSs alone.