CPS: Synergy: Collaborative Research: Engineering Safety-Critical Cyber-Physical-Human Systems

这个跨学科的项目汇集了一组工程和计算机科学研究人员，以创建、验证和展示新技术的价值，以确保由硬件、软件和人的组合组成的系统被设计为以真正协同和安全的方式运行。这些“网络-物理-人类”(CPH)系统的一个显著且日益普遍的特征是，安全操作和性能的责任通常由硬件和软件形式的日益复杂的自动化来分担，而指挥和监督自动化行为的人可能需要介入，以便在发生意外的环境情况或硬件或软件故障时接管手动或共享的系统控制。最终目标是实现系统运行中的安全和性能水平，超过熟练的人类操作员或完全自主的系统单独操作所能达到的水平。为此，研究小组将利用他们在以下方面的专业知识：设计稳健、容错的控制系统，设计用于软件验证的降低复杂性的架构，以及用于认知建模的人为因素技术，以通过有效的界面设计确保对人类情况的高水平了解。通过这样做，可以实现日益复杂的自动化的安全、成本和性能优势，而不会因自动化造成人类操作员和系统操作之间的更大距离而导致经常观察到的安全风险。这些技术将被迭代地创建，并使用包括中等保真度飞机和飞行模拟器以及医疗环境中的辅助自动化的模拟的人在环路模拟中的实验来进行经验评估。更广泛地说，这项研究预计将对未来CPH系统的工程产生影响并提供信息，对于所有行业和系统，其特征是越来越多地使用由人类指导和监督的硬件和软件自动化，其在预期情况下提供额外的一层安全，例如包括高速公路和汽车自动化、航空航天和空中交通控制自动化、半自动过程控制系统、以及越来越多地在医疗环境中使用的多种形式的自动化系统和装置，如重症监护室和手术室。这项研究还有望为政府和行业提供CPH系统所用技术的安全认证标准，并教育接受跨学科技能和能力培训的下一代学生，这些技能和能力是设计未来CPH系统所需的。研究人员将组织行业、学术和政府研讨会，以传播结果，并在整个研究项目过程中指导那些属于代表性不足群体的学生。

This cross-disciplinary project brings together a team of engineering and computer science researchers to create, validate, and demonstrate the value of new techniques for ensuring that systems composed of combinations of hardware, software, and humans are designed to operate in a truly synergistic and safe fashion. One notable and increasingly common feature of these "Cyber-Physical-Human" (CPH) systems is that the responsibility for safe operation and performance is typically shared by increasingly sophisticated automation in the form of hardware and software, and humans who direct and oversee the behavior of automation yet may need to intervene to take over manual or shared system control when unexpected environmental situations or hardware or software failures occur. The ultimate goal is to achieve levels of safety and performance in system operation that exceed the levels attainable by either skilled human operators or completely autonomous systems acting alone. To do so, the research team will draw upon their expertise in the design of robust, fault-tolerant control systems, in the design of complexity-reduction architectures for software verification, and in human factors techniques for cognitive modeling to assure high levels of human situation awareness through effective interface design. By doing so, the safety, cost and performance benefits of increasingly sophisticated automation can be achieved without the frequently observed safety risks caused by automation creating greater distance between human operators and system operation. The techniques will be iteratively created and empirically evaluated using experimentation in human-in-the-loop simulations, including a medium-fidelity aircraft and flight simulator and a simulation of assistive automation in a medical context.More broadly, this research is expected to impact and inform the engineering of future CPH systems generally, for all industries and systems characterized by an increasing use of hardware and software automation directed and overseen by humans who provide an additional layer of safety in expected situations, Examples include highway and automotive automation, aerospace and air traffic control automation, semi-automated process control systems, and the many forms of automated systems and devices increasingly being used in medical contexts, such as the ICU and operating room. This research is also expected to inform government and industry efforts to provide safety certification criteria for the technologies used in CPH systems, and to educate a next generation of students trained in the cross-disciplinary skills and abilities needed to engineer the CPH systems of the future. The investigators will organize industry, academic, and government workshops to disseminate results and mentor students who are members of underrepresented groups through the course of this research project.