Collaborative Research: Cyber-secure and Resilient Supervisory Control of Networked Discrete-Event Systems

随着计算机、通信和控制技术的快速发展，现代工程系统由许多分布式和网络化的物理工厂、控制单元和其他设备组成。这些联网系统容易受到网络攻击。该项目的主要目标是开发形式化的方法来综合控制逻辑，以实现对网络动态系统的网络安全和弹性控制，这些系统受到通信、传感或驱动基础设施的攻击。通过提供形式化的方法来检测网络攻击并为联网系统综合可证明具有弹性的控制逻辑，这项工作将提高在其控制结构中嵌入复杂控制逻辑的先进控制系统的可靠性和性能。该项目的开发将以模型为基础，从而确保它们适用于遭受网络攻击的一大类技术联网系统。特别是，可再生能源和电动汽车渗透率高的电网将被考虑，这是一个具有相当重要社会意义的技术领域。所提出的在控制系统的监督层综合网络安全和弹性控制逻辑的方法的科学基础是控制工程中发展起来的事件驱动系统的控制和诊断理论。网络控制系统将在具有离散状态空间和事件驱动动态的过渡系统或离散事件系统的框架下建模。复杂控制系统高层的监督控制将被设计成确保离散模型满足一组与安全属性和活性属性相关的给定逻辑规范，并对通信基础设施或传感器和执行器本身的网络攻击具有弹性。为了检测网络攻击和其他故障，离散事件系统的可诊断性理论将扩展到受传感器和执行器联合攻击的网络系统。该研究计划将控制工程中形式化方法中的监督控制技术与理论计算机科学中离散博弈中的算法技术相结合。除了该项目的理论和算法部分外，研究人员还将调查具有高可再生能源渗透率的智能电网和电动汽车的应用领域，其中所阐述的控制和诊断问题具有很高的相关性。这一应用领域的工作将包括对在这些模型上开发的综合方法进行建模、测试，以及构建用于对开发的方法进行性能评估的模拟试验台。该奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的智力优势和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

With the rapid development of computer, communication, and control technologies, modern engineering systems consist of many distributed and networked physical plants, control units, and other devices. These networked systems are vulnerable to cyber attacks. The principal objective of this project is to develop formal methodologies to synthesize control logic for cyber-secure and resilient control of networked dynamic systems subject to attacks on their communication, sensing, or actuation infrastructure. By providing formal methodologies to detect cyber attacks and synthesize provably-resilient control logic for networked systems, this work will enhance the reliability and performance of advanced control systems that embed complex control logic in their control structure. The developments in this project will be model-based, thereby ensuring their applicability to a large class of technological networked systems subject to cyber attacks. In particular, power grids with high penetration of renewable energy sources and electric vehicles will be considered, a technological area of considerable societal importance.The scientific foundation of the proposed approach to synthesizing cyber-secure and resilient control logic at the supervisory layer of the control system is the theory of control and diagnosis of event-driven systems developed in control engineering. Networked control systems will be modeled in the framework of transition systems with discrete state spaces and event-driven dynamics, or discrete event systems. Supervisory control at the higher layer of complex control systems will be designed to ensure that the discrete model satisfies a set of given logical specifications related to safety properties and liveness properties and are resilient to cyber attacks on the communication infrastructure or on sensors and actuators themselves. To detect cyber attacks and other faults, the theory of diagnosability of discrete event systems will be extended to networked systems subject to joint sensor and actuator attacks. The research plan blends supervisory control techniques from formal methods in control engineering with algorithmic techniques from discrete games in theoretical computer science. In addition to the theoretical and algorithmic components of this project, the researchers will investigate the application area of smart power grids with high penetration of renewables and electric vehicles, where the control and diagnosis problems formulated herein are highly relevant. Work in this application area will involve modeling, testing of the synthesis methodologies developed on these models, and construction of a simulation testbed for performance evaluation of the developed methodologies.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.