Abstract
In this perspective article, we first recall the historic background of human-cyber-physical systems (HCPSs), and then introduce and clarify important concepts. We discuss the key challenges in establishing the scientific foundation from a system engineering point of view, including (1) complex heterogeneity, (2) lack of appropriate abstractions, (3) dynamic black-box integration of heterogeneous systems, (4) complex requirements for functionalities, performance, and quality of services, and (5) design, implementation, and maintenance of HCPS to meet requirements. Then we propose four research directions to tackle the challenges, including (1) abstractions and computational theory of HCPS, (2) theories and methods of HCPS architecture modelling, (3) specification and verification of model properties, and (4) software-defined HCPS. The article also serves as the editorial of this special section on cyber-physical systems and summarises the four articles included in this special section.
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Acknowledgements
We would like to thank all the authors who made significant effort to submit their work for this special section and the authors of the four papers included in this special section for their effort in revising their manuscripts. Our many thanks go to the reviewers for their dedicated work. We also thank Prof. Jonathan BOWEN, Prof. Shmuel TYSZBEROWICZ, and Mr. Guisen WU for their reading and comments on early versions of this article and the reviewers of this perspective for their comments. Parts of the discussion in this perspective are based on the application of the Chinese National Natural Science Foundation Key Project “Theory of Modelling and Software Defined Method for Systems of Human-Cyber-Physical Computing”. Zhiming LIU, as the coordinator of the project, would like to thank his project colleagues Prof. Wei DONG and Dr. Wan-wei LIU of the National University of Defence Technology, Profs. Miao-miao ZHANG and Guan-jun LIU of Tongji University, and Drs. Heng-jun ZHAO, Bo LIU, and Yuan-rui ZHANG of RISE at Southwest University for the fruitful collaboration and hard work, and Drs. Bin GU and Yu JIANG for their great supports to the preparation for the project application. Zhiming LIU would also like to express his appreciation to his students Quan SUN, Huan TU, Gui-sen WU, Wei ZHANG, Ting-ting ZHANG, Wei ZHAO, et al. for their help.
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Project supported in part by the Capacity Development Fund of Southwest University, China (No. SWU116007) and the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Nos. 61732019, 61672435, 61811530327, and 62032019)
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The challenges and research problems in this paper are formulated through long-time discussions and exchanges of ideas between Zhiming LIU and Ji WANG. The research directions are proposed following their personal communications. The paper is typed by Zhiming LIU and checked by Ji WANG.
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Zhiming LIU and Ji WANG declare that they have no conflict of interest.
Zhiming LIU received his MS degree in Computing Science from Software Institute of CAS in 1988 and PhD degree in Computer Science from University of Warwick in 1991. He worked in three universities in the UK during 1988–2005 and 2013–2015, and the United Nations University — International Institute for Software Technology (Macau) during 2002–2013. In 2016 he joined Southwest University in Chongqing as a full-time professor, leading the development of the University Centre for Research and Innovation in Software Engineering (RISE). He is an editorial board member of Frontiers of Information Technology & Electronic Engineering. He has been working in the area of software theory and methods, and is known for work on transformational approach to fault-tolerant and real-time systems, probabilistic duration calculus for system dependability analysis, and the rCOS method for object-oriented and component-based software.
Ji WANG received his BS degree and PhD degree in Computer Science in 1987 and 1995, respectively, from the College of Computer, National University of Defense Technology, Changsha, China. He is now a full professor at the State Key Laboratory of High Performance Computing, National University of Defense Technology, China. He is an executive associate editor-in-chief of Frontiers of Information Technology & Electronic Engineering. His research interests include formal methods and software engineering.
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Liu, Z., Wang, J. Human-cyber-physical systems: concepts, challenges, and research opportunities. Front Inform Technol Electron Eng 21, 1535–1553 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1631/FITEE.2000537
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1631/FITEE.2000537