ABSTRACT
In this introductory level overview, the emerging areas of Cyber-Physical Systems (CPS), Systems of Systems and their Engineering (SoS/E), Internet/Industrial Internet of Things (IoT/I2oT), the forthcoming 5th Generation 2Mobile systems (5G) and cross-cutting Decision Making are discussed with emphasis on their underpinning domains, including control and computing engineering. Several examples illustrate the concepts related to large and small scale systems e.g. mid-air collision avoidance, cryogenics and other instrumentation applications. Beyond historical references, an intuitive profiling scheme addressing {cyber, human, social and physical} content is proposed. While the origins and the nature of the above-mentioned topics are different, there are complementarities and synergistic combinations. More than just their fashionable names, these areas have opened new opportunities for developing the next generation of high performance, safe and secure systems. However, and despite the progress made to date (2017), “the expected level has not yet been reached” (recent NSF comments [1]). We need more than small incremental improvements and due integration of today’s design methods, that is, radically new ideas to better understand, model and manage the cyber and physical worlds and their symbiosis – frequently with humans in the middle. Therefore, the investigation of promising mathematical methods, which might come for example, from novel sets and geometric theories, algebras, effective parametrisations, uncertainty quantifications, or advanced signal and logic representations, may be of help. We briefly discuss some of these ideas. This chapter is based on extended current literature and debates across a broad systems spectrum. Furthermore, it includes additional observations, industrial perspectives and personal views by the author, as food for thought.
