Sustainable-CPS · Designing Human-centered Sustainable Cyber-physical Systems of the Future

Designing Human-centered Sustainable Cyber-physical Systems of the Future

Problem definition: Cyber-physical systems (CPS),“system that includes integrations of computation, networking, and physical processes with feedback loops where physical processes affect computations and vice versa” has the potential to dwarf the 20th-century information technologies revolution. Today, CPS exist everywhere in different sizes, with different functionalities and capabilities. Some examples can be listed as smart cities, industry 4.0 applications, internet of things, autonomous systems (vehicles, drones), intelligent transport systems and so on. Several characteristics of these systems are new and these new properties push the limits of traditional engineering practices. Some examples to these new characteristics are intelligence, autonomy, connectivity, collaboration and similar. Moreover, today’s engineering education and practices are preliminarily concentrating to solve technical problems related to these systems and, unfortunately, do not include sustainability and social implications perspective as default. Sustainable-CPS project aims to use interactive, collaborative, and innovative tools from design thinking, systems thinking and future studies to develop a framework and a toolkit to support the design of future CPS by primarily focusing on human needs, social implications and sustainability. While CPS are seen as promising advancements to tackle societal and technical challenges, the current engineering practices related to design and development of CPS do not aim to directly target sustainability concerns. The limited theory that exists today is unable to support the level of complexity, scalability, security, safety, interoperability, and flexible design and operation that will be required to meet future needs. In consequence, innovative engineering frameworks, environments, knowledge, and tools for realizing novel CPS and services are needed to make these systems sustainable, ethical, understandable, extendable, successful, safe and useful. The Sustainable-CPS project addresses this need. Importance for society: CPS are increasingly common in our industries as a form of manufacturing/robotics/maintenance systems, in our life as transportation/infrastructure/communication systems, or in our homes as smart products. Sustainability of these system has the potential to improve the energy consumption, and environmental effects, support the life quality of the citizens and contribute better manufacturing production and similar industrial processes which will in turn provide better work environments and life standards. Overall objectives: • RO1) to identify the future properties of CPS and their effect on sustainability indicators • RO2) to evaluate and blend future studies, design thinking and systems thinking for improving the future CPS • RO3) to develop and adapt a framework for guiding innovative, sustainable and human-centered solutions for future CPS • RO4) to evaluate and validate the applicability of the interdisciplinary framework and a toolkit for designing future human-centered sustainable CPS

Текст от CORDIS, на английски · Данни: CORDIS, © Европейски съюз