ABSTRACT
In recent times, it can be very well seen that computation and communication abilities of devices have significantly increased. The reach of such kind of devices to a large number of people has increased due to the availability of computation and communication capabilities in all kinds of entities in the physical world. The systems that bridge the gap between the cyber world (computation and communication) and physical world are known as cyber-physical systems. A cyber-physical systems integrates computing, communication, and storage capabilities along with monitoring and controlling the entities of the physical world. It is a convergence of computation, communication, information, and control. The term cyber-physical systems refers to a new age of systems that integrate computational and physical components of devices to facilitate better interaction between humans and their nearby
devices. Cyber-physical systems are those systems that are monitored, controlled, and managed by the use of sensors and actuators. The work of the sensors is to provide input for the cyber-physical systems by monitoring the physical environment. Based on these inputs, cyber-physical systems perform certain computations and exhibits the results by the help of actuators in the physical world. It can also be considered as the convergence of many systems such as embedded systems, distributed sensor systems, and real-time systems. Due to the diverse characteristics of CPS, it allows the users to add new capabilities to the physical word. It provides a way in which the precision of the cyber world meets the uncertainties of the physical environment. As with the advancement of the Internet humans could communicate among themselves in revolutionary ways, cyber-physical systems would also give rise to new innovative ways in which humans could interact and communicate with the physical world around them. The rise in the field of cyber-physical systems could be seen as a result of many factors including revolution in wireless communication, high Internet bandwidth, availability of low-cost sensors, and low-power-consuming computing devices. Figure 19.1 exhibits how exactly a cyber-physical systems looks like.
