Event-based Wireless Control for Cyber-physical Systems

• Applicants: Professor Dr. Sebastian Trimpe; Professor Dr. Marco Zimmerling
• Subject Area: Automation, Mechatronics, Control Systems, Intelligent Technical Systems, Robotics ; Electronic Semiconductors, Components and Circuits, Integrated Systems, Sensor Technology, Theoretical Electrical Engineering ; Computer Architecture, Embedded and Massively Parallel Systems ; Security and Dependability, Operating-, Communication- and Distributed Systems
• Term: from 2016 to 2023
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 315036061

Many of today’s and most of tomorrow’s computing systems interact with the physical world through sensors and actuators. The ability to close feedback loops among those devices over dynamic wireless multi-hop networks enables a new breed of powerful cyber-physical system (CPS) applications, but calls for concerted research contributions from the control and communication communities to meet the extraordinary dependability, adaptability, and efficiency requirements of these systems.The EcoCPS project has made significant progress in this direction by demonstrating fast feedback control over low-power wireless multi-hop networks with provable guarantees on closed-loop stability, as well as unprecedented efficiency and flexibility in the use of limited resources by tightly integrating self-triggered control with real-time wireless communication. This follow-up proposal builds on these foundations and aims to extend the capabilities of today’s wireless CPS in several ways. To this end, the EcoCPS project will conduct fundamental research at the intersection of distributed control, wireless networking, and machine learning. The project targets the principled design and real-world validation of an adaptive and scalable wireless CPS platform that leverages learning and control inside teams of distributed agents in a principled manner for efficiently providing unprecendented functionality with formally proven dependability properties. The concepts and methods will be integrated and validated on a wireless CPS testbed developed in this project, and transferred to real-world smart production scenarios through collaboration with Fraunhofer IPA. As such, the EcoCPS project shares many of the objectives of the DFG Priority Program 1914 “Cyber-Physical Networking,” and emphasizes the collaboration with partners from the U.S. within the NSF CPS program by proposing a Mercator Fellow from Stanford University.

• DFG Programme: Priority Programmes
• Subproject of: SPP 1914: Cyber-Physical Networking (CPN)
• International Connection: USA
• Partner Organisation: National Science Foundation (NSF)
• Cooperation Partners: Professor Dr.-Ing. Marco Huber; Professor Mac Schwager