NSF CPS Breakthrough: Compositional Modeling of Cyber-Physical Systems

Compositional Modeling of Cyber-Physical Systems is a three-year, $500K grant to develop new mathematical modeling techniques for cyber-physical systems. Cleaveland and Marcus will devise novel conceptual methods for assembling systems from subsystems, and for reasoning about the behavior of systems in terms of the behavior of their computational or physical subsystems. The research will enable scientists and engineers to develop more realistic models of the systems they are designing, and to obtain greater insights into the eventual behavior of these systems without having to build costly prototypes.

Specifically, the researchers will develop the novel modeling paradigm Generalized Synchronization Trees (GSTs) into a rich framework for both describing cyber-physical systems (CPSs) and studying their behavior under interconnection. GSTs are inspired by Milner's use of Synchronization Trees (STs) to model interconnected computing processes, but GSTs generalize the mathematical structure of their forebears in such a way as to encompass systems with discrete ("Cyber") as well as continuous ("Physical") dynamics.