Networked Collaborative Multi-Agent Cyber-Physical Systems

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A cyber-physical system (CPS) involves technologies of computing, communication, more precisely, networking, and control. In spite of great efforts in developing technology for CPS, only limited cross-disciplinary efforts toward the fundamental investigations on CPS technology. In this joint project, involving TU Dresden, University of South Florida and North Carolina State University, we will pursue innovation in the three disciplines converging in Cyber-Physical Networking, namely computing, communication and control or CoCoCo for short. In all of these disciplines, the cross-domain interrelationships will be taken into account. Computing will be tackled in Work Package A (WP). The methodology followed will be mainly artificial intelligence, specifically reinforcement learning. The reason is that RL has proved to be an appropriate methodology for enabling agents to interact with their environment. Communications will be approached in WP[B]. Network virtualization is our method of choice since it allows adaptability to the complex dynamics and interdependencies of control agents and networking aspects. Control will be considered in WP[C]. The framework used for studying control over wireless networks will be network control system theory, since it jointly studies the communication and control aspects in the design of control systems with networks on the loop. Finally, in WP[D] we shall bring the main outcomes of each of these work packages together and propose a joint evaluation through experimentation. We expect to obtain and provide insights through experimental evaluation of the limits of the current theories, all converging in this compelling field of networked CPS.