ABSTRACT
A cyber-physical system is a system that combines physical and computer or cyber components. The physical component consists of systems that exist in nature, such as biological entities as well as those developed by humans, such as transportation and energy-producing systems. This component exists, operates, and interacts with its environment in continuous or ordinary time. The computational component consists of systems and entities involved in processing, communicating, and controlling information via computational means. These include algorithms implemented in software and digital systems, interfaced to the physical components via analog-to-digital converters (ADCs) and digitalto-analog (DACs) converters and digital communication networks. They are man-made systems that operate in discrete-time or in an event-driven fashion. Evidently, the complexity of component
integration in cyber-physical systems stems from the fact that the computational component is distributed throughout the system, and tightly coupled with the physical component. As a consequence, cyber-physical systems are highly complex systems combining continuous and discrete dynamics.
