Cyber-Physical Systems

The Ultimate Fantasy of every Engineer.

I don’t know, I might be totally off on this one.And if i am, i would love to hear about it from you guys. But I feel that there is a lot of potential in some new and underappreciated fields of study coming up in science not many know about.
I came across a course on edX.org which was about cyber physical systems. Now my field of interests lies in the confluence of physics and computer science. So I thought this course would give me some insight into what i would potentially be doing in my life. So I browsed through a few introductory videos in the course, and boy had i hit the bulls-eye. It was exactly what we call “Internet of Things” here in a more general sense.

Cyber Physical Systems are physical systems (Systems that work in congruence with the laws of physics) that are controlled and programmed by computational algorithms and networking systems and vice versa.

Everything around you is a system

Every machine, every piece of hardware, software, even the air around you, is a system, on a broad scale. Our Solar System is also called a “System”.Even Your body is a system. When we talk about particles in physics, we say , a system of particles and not just a “group” of particles, because those particles don’t just stand there, they do something. They have a certain behaviour. Just like other systems around you.

“A system is a regularly interacting or interdependent group of items forming a unified whole.[1] Every system is delineated by its spatial and temporal boundaries, surrounded and influenced by its environment, described by its structure and purpose and expressed in its functioning.”

Ok, So what? Is this a regular physics class? No. In fact, I was never taught any of these things in school.(Or maybe I was and I totally missed it).
The point is, everything around you is a system. But Cyber Physical Systems are systems that you can control. By computers. yeah. Physical systems, that run on the principles of physics, that you can control with a computer. Sounds familiar? Yep. Robotics . But no matter how similar these two feilds might sound when you define them, there are several , not only one points where these two could rather appear to be miles apart.
For instance, Robotics is mainly and primarily concerned with physically (mechanically) manipulating objects from one point to another in space and time, when computational algorithms are loaded in them. But On the other hand, Cyber physical systems do much more. Basically, Cyber Physical Systems gather complex data from a natural physical( a rather complex and unpredictable) environment, and computes some numbers according to a set of protocols, acts on the environment in accordance with the physical laws.(That’s what they’re ideally Supposed to do)

The Problem

Now I know I can’t see you but I somehow feel that you might be a little confused. Let me explain in brief.

Computer Systems and Electronics are Robust, reliable and very fast systems that compute and calculate large problems in a split second.

But these systems have certain “Physical” constraints, and no matter how accurate these systems are in theory, the actual machine do face certain problems when it faces the real deal.

In physics whenever we study theory, we study ideal situations in order to get accurate results. Ideal situations are when we assume there is no friction between gears, no rusting, no heating up or melting of any sort in the system. That is when we get error free results, and that is how you score good grades. But in reality, Science is much more different. There is a window of errors we must be ready to face. Potential problems that may occur while we actually try and implement any physical theory or law.

Computing and estimating the probability of facing these errors are a big deal in physics, and in the end also in Cyber Physical Systems.

So why do I wonder whether Cyber Physical Systems are the future of engineering? Because with the amount of data being generated every single day grows exponentially , thinking about the applications of Cyber Physical Systems becomes more crucial.

We also need to figure out ways to make the gaps smaller and the errors farther more negligible, when Cyber and physical domains, as perfect as they might be on their own, converge to serve better functionality, in a world with self driving cars, and robots that perform surgery.

We will Talk much more about Cyber Physical Systems in future articles. Trust me, there is a lot to talk about, and a lot of math to do.

—A GritScience Article