This project seeks to address fundamental gaps in the understanding of collective behavior, and to develop a methodology for software design for cyber physical systems that use sensing, communication, and actuation to accomplish tasks that are well beyond the capabilities of individual units. Specifically, the focus is on methodologies that will allow cyber physical systems to adapt to changing environmental conditions and be resilient to disturbances and attacks, and tools to translate design specifications for the group to software design specifications for individual units by essentially solving the inverse problem for networked cyber physical systems.
This research represents the cross pollination of research in molecular, cell and population biology, systems modeling, control theory and robotics. It brings novel modeling approaches and recent results in systems biology to bear on the problem of designing and architecting cyber physical systems. Specifically, it will establish a framework for designing and realizing algorithms for real-time, aggregated networked systems across multiple time-scales, and help develop the foundation for high-confidence software for reconfigurable, adaptive and resilient systems.
The project is expected to lay the foundation for a new community of researchers that include biologists, control theorists and roboticists through research workshops.
