Paper Critique #1
Digvijay Singh
Electrical Engineering, UCLA
digvijay.in@gmail.com
ABSTRACT
In this paper, I critique former literature and work on Cyber-
physical systems. Comparisons with embedded systems, core
issues, future research directions and my personal ideas are the
areas of focus.
Categories and Subject Descriptors
A.1 [Introductory and Survey]: Cyber-physical systems.
General Terms
Documentation, Design, Reliability, Security, Verification.
Keywords
Cyber-physical systems, Embedded systems, Networked
Embedded systems.
1.INTRODUCTION
Embedded systems have become the buzzword in the industry
and market in recent times. Daily-life examples like cell-phones
and iPods are becoming more and more pervasive. Embedded
system design is still in its infancy and most current systems use
conventional software techniques and mundane architectural
designs. These work reasonably for small ‘isolated’ systems.
Although, as systems start to form networks (less isolation) or
become more complicated, conventional engineering and
computer science wisdom turns out to be lacking the tools to
effectively deal with their requirements.
2.CYBER-PHYSICAL Vs. EMBEDDED
‘Embedded systems’ like ‘Cyber-physical systems’ are systems
that couple computation with the physical world. These systems
(ideally) possess the capability to seamlessly integrate physical
world sensing and control with computation. This is the principal
difference between future cyber-physical systems and current-day
embedded systems which fall short of the required capabilities
(especially for large or extensively networked systems).
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EE202A Fall’08, September, 2008, Los Angeles, CA, USA.
Copyright 2008 UCLA.
Modern-day embedded systems, albeit numerous, don’t show a
single example of a system with perfectly seamless integration of
the cyber and physical world. The main reason for this problem
is the basis of such designs which lie in conventional computer
science and engineering theory which was never developed with
the physical world in mind. These designs tend to view
computations as just data manipulation (Turing’s model). This
leads to lack of theory that integrates both the physical and cyber
world in a unified framework. The vision is to overcome
conventional embedded system knowledge and search for new
paradigm of system design to create true ‘cyber-physical
systems’.
3.CORE ISSUES
3.1Time and Concurrency
The notion of time is also an important requirement that all
cyber-physical systems exhibit. The basic problem with current
computational models is that there is no notion of time present in
them. The correct execution of a conventional process has
nothing to do with the time it takes (like the Von Neumann
architecture where only sequence and not timing of operations is
important). This makes it impossible to make perfectly
predictable systems due to the inherent unpredictability of the
underlying model we use.
Cyber-physical systems are also inherently concurrent due to
their close coupling with possibly multiple physical world
processes. Current programming concepts are not adept at
handling concurrency. For example, most multi-tasking is done
using process threads and real-time scheduling of these threads is
still a problem that has not been solved. The reason for this is not
the lack of a scheduling algorithm, but instead the lack of a
notion of time and concurrency in the underlying component used
to model computation (i.e. a process thread).
Instead of trying to force incompatible conventional design
wisdom onto embedded systems, the goal should be to develop a
unified model which takes into account the physical notion of
time and concurrency along with computation.
3.2Frameworks
A framework is a set of rules through which components of a
system may interact. Current frameworks don’t necessarily suit
the design of cyber-physical systems.1
1
This document is part of coursework done for the
EE202A fall ’08 course at UCLA. Information used in this
paper is for study purposes only and is the copyright of the
respective owner(s).
3.3Software
Please leave 3.81 cm (1.5") of blank text box at the bottom of the
left column of the first page for the copyright notice.
3.4Hardware
For pages other than the first page, start at the top of the page,
and continue in double-column format. The two columns on the
last page should be as close to equal length as possible.
Table 1. Table captions should be placed above the table
Graphics Top In-between Bottom
Tables End Last First
Figures Good Similar Very well
3.5Networking
Footnotes should be Times New Roman 9-point, and justified to
the full width of the column.
Use the “ACM Reference format” for references – that is, a
numbered list at the end of the article, ordered alphabetically and
formatted accordingly. See examples of some typical reference
types, in the new “ACM Reference format”, at the end of this
document. Within this template, use the style named references
for the text. Acceptable abbreviations, for journal names, can be
found here: http://library.caltech.edu/reference/abbreviations/
The references are also in 9 pt., but that section (see Section 7) is
ragged right. References should be published materials
accessible to the public. Internal technical reports may be cited
only if they are easily accessible (i.e. you can give the address to
obtain the report within your citation) and may be obtained by
any reader. Proprietary information may not be cited. Private
communications should be acknowledged, not referenced (e.g.,
“[Robertson, personal communication]”).
3.6Testing and Verification
Do not include headers, footers or page numbers in your
submission. These will be added when the publications are
assembled.
4.FUTURE RESEARCH DIRECTIONS
Place Tables/Figures/Images in text as close to the reference as
possible (see Figure 1). It may extend across both columns to a
maximum width of 17.78 cm (7”).
Captions should be Times New Roman 9-point bold. They
should be numbered (e.g., “Table 1” or “Figure 2”), please note
that the word for Table and Figure are spelled out. Figure’s
captions should be centered beneath the image or picture, and
Table captions should be centered above the table body.
5.MY PERSONAL IDEAS
The heading of a section should be in Times New Roman 12-
point bold in all-capitals flush left with an additional 6-points of
white space above the section head. Sections and subsequent
sub- sections should be numbered and flush left. For a section
head and a subsection head together (such as Section 3 and
subsection 3.1), use no additional space above the subsection
head.
6.ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
My thanks to ACM SIGCHI for allowing me to modify templates
they had developed. Also, thanks to authors of the references for
giving me such great information to use in this document. The
information has deeply impacted my views on embedded
systems.
7.REFERENCES
[1] Bowman, M., Debray, S. K., and Peterson, L. L. 1993.
Reasoning about naming systems. ACM Trans. Program.
Lang. Syst. 15, 5 (Nov. 1993), 795-825. DOI=
http://doi.acm.org/10.1145/161468.161471.
[2] Ding, W. and Marchionini, G. 1997 A Study on Video
Browsing Strategies. Technical Report. University of
Maryland at College Park.
[3] Fröhlich, B. and Plate, J. 2000. The cubic mouse: a new
device for three-dimensional input. In Proceedings of the
SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing
Systems (The Hague, The Netherlands, April 01 - 06, 2000).
CHI '00. ACM Press, New York, NY, 526-531. DOI=
http://doi.acm.org/10.1145/332040.332491