Cyber-physical systems are the natural extension of the so-called "Internet of Things". They are "systems of collaborating computational elements controlling physical entities". Cyber Physical Systems of Systems (CPSoS) are considered "The Next Computing Revolution" after Mainframe computing (60's-70's), Desktop computing & Internet (80's-90's) and Ubiquitous computing (00's); because all aspects of daily life are rapidly evolving towards humans interacting amongst themselves as well as their environment via computational devices (often mobile), and because in most cases systems will employ their computational capabilities to interact amongst themselves.
CPSoS enable the physical world to merge with the cyber one. Using sensors, the embedded systems monitor and collect data from physical processes, such as the steering of a vehicle, energy consumption or human health functions. The systems are networked making the data globally available. CPSoS make it possible for software applications to directly interact with events in the physical world, for example to measure and react to changes in blood pressure or peaks in energy consumption. Embedded hardware and software systems crucially expand the functionality and competitiveness of vehicles, aircraft, medical equipment, production plants and household appliances. Connecting these systems to a virtual environment of globally networked services and information systems opens completely new areas of innovation and novel business platforms.
Future CPSoS will have many sophisticated, interconnected parts that must instantaneously exchange, parse, and act on detailed data in a highly coordinated manner. Continued advances in science and engineering will be necessary to enable advances in design and development of these complex systems. Multi- scale, multi-layer, multi-domain, and multi-system integrated infrastructures will require new foundations in system science and engineering. Scientists and engineers with an understanding of otherwise physical systems will need to work in tandem with computer and information scientists to achieve effective, workable designs. In this tutorial, basic and advanced issues on the design of the future heterogeneous CPSoS are presented including relevant Blockchain technologies, reconfigurable systems, advanced sensor interfaces and human-centered design processes. Certain advanced tools for the design and implementation of the cyber parts of the CPSoS (i.e. FPGA design tools from Xilinx) are also covered.
Hatzopoulos, Alkis: - "Prof. Alkis A. Hatzopoulos (Chatzopoulos) was born in Thessaloniki, Greece. He received his Degree in Physics (with honours), his Master Degree in Electronics and his Ph.D. Degree in Electrical Engineering from the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, Greece, in 1980, 1983 and 1989, respectively. He has been with the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki since 1981, were now he is a full Professor. Since 2002 he has been elected as the Director of the Electronics Laboratory of the ECE Dept. His research interests include modelling, design and testing of integrated circuits and systems (analog, mixed-signal, high-frequency), three dimensional Integrated Circuits (3D ICs), electronic communication circuits, thin-film transistors, instrumentation electronics, Bioelectronics systems, space electronics. He is actively involved in educational and research projects, and he is the author or co-author of more than 170 scientific papers in international journals and conference proceedings and three book chapters in international textbooks. He has been also granted a European and American patent. He has been a Member (2010-2018) of the Belgian Research Foundation Committee (FWO Expert panel WT7) for National (Flanders) Grants and Project evaluations. He has given a large number of lectures on his research topics in various Universities. He has been a visiting Professor at Michigan State University, MI, USA, (Feb. - July 1995), at the Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, Belgium (Feb. - July 2004), and at the University of Texas at Dallas (UTD) (Jan. - July 2016). He is a Senior Member of IEEE and he has been elected as the IEEE Greece CASS-SSCS joint Chapter Chair for many years."
Papaefstathiou, Ioannis: - Dr. Ioannis Papaefstathiou is an Associate Professor at the School of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Aristotle University of Thessaloniki and a co- founder of Exascale Performance Systems (EXAPSYS) which is a spin-off of Technical University of Crete, Synelixis Solutions SA and Foundation of Research and Technology Hellas (FORTH). From 2004-2018 he was a Professor at ECE School at Technical University of Crete and a Manager at Synelixis Solutions SA. His main research interests are in the design and implementation methodologies for CPS with tightly coupled design parameters and highly constrained resources as well as in heterogeneous High Performance Computing (HPC) systems and the associated programming/development tools. He was granted a PhD in computer science at the University of Cambridge in 2001, an M.Sc. (Ranked 1st) from Harvard University in 1997 and a B.Sc. (Ranked 2nd) from the University of Crete in 1996. He has published more than 100 papers in IEEE and ACM-sponsored journals and conferences, he has been the guest editor an IEEE Micro issues and he is a member of the Program Committee of numerous IEEE and ACM conferences. He is participating / has participated in numerous European R&D Programmes(e.g. OSMOSIS, FASTCUDA, HEAP, FASTER, COSSIM, ECOSCALE, EXTRA, EuroEXA); in total he has been Principal Investigator in 12 competitively funded research projects in Europe (in 7 of them he was the technical coordinator of the whole project), in the last 7 years, where his cumulative budget share exceeds 5 million.
