Programming support for time-sensitive adaptation in cyberphysical systems

Cyberphysical systems (CPS) integrate embedded sensors, actuators, and computing elements for controlling physical processes. Due to the intimate interactions with the surrounding environment, CPS software must continuously adapt to changing conditions. Enacting adaptation decisions is often subject to strict time requirements to ensure control stability, while CPS software must operate within the tight resource constraints that characterize CPS platforms. De- velopers are typically left without dedicated programming support to cope with these aspects. This results in either to neglect functional or timing issues that may potentially arise or to invest significant efforts to implement hand-crafted so- lutions. We provide programming constructs that allow de- velopers to simplify the specification of adaptive processing and to rely on well-defined time semantics. Our evaluation shows that using these constructs simplifies implementations while reducing developers’ effort, at the price of a modest memory and processing overhead

Enabling Sustainable Public Transport in Smart Cities through Real-time Decision Support

The growing consumption of fossil fuels and its negative environmental consequences have been a major concern during the last few decades. In line with that, public transport operators face global pressure to replace diesel buses by battery-electric buses (BEBs) in many countries. However, BEBs need to be recharged several times throughout the day to avoid running out of energy due to their limited driving range and slow charging rate. Accordingly, operating BEBs is substantially more sensitive to unanticipated delays and excess energy consumption, which raises serious challenges with respect to charging schedules. Moreover, BEBs are only a truly sustainable alternative if they are powered by renewable energy generators (REGs), which have intermittent and uncertain generation. Thus, we design and propose a real-time decision support system to overcome these uncertainties and maximize the utilization of REGs and minimize the impact on the grid while guaranteeing a feasible operation for the BEBs

Internet of Things (IoT): Societal Challenges & Scientific Research Fields for IoT

International audienceJust as the Internet radically reshaped society, the Internet of Things (IoT) willhave an impact on all areas of human life: from our homes, vehicles, workplacesand factories, to our cities and towns, agriculture and healthcare systems. It willalso affect all levels of society (individuals, companies and state-level), from urbanto rural and the natural world beyond. This makes it essential to have a properunderstanding of IoT and the challenges which relate to it. The primary aims ofthis document are to (i) determine the scope of IoT, its origins, current developments and perspectives, and (ii) identify the main societal, technical and scientific challenges linked to IoT.It seems inevitable that IoT will become increasingly omnipresent. Indeed, itis set to penetrate every aspect of all of our lives, connecting everything (billionsof new heterogeneous machines communicating with each other) and measuringeverything: from the collective action we take at a global level, right down to oursmallest individual physiological signals, in real-time. This is a double-edged sword,in that it simultaneously gives people cause for hope (automation, ­optimisation,innovative new functionalities etc.) and cause for fear (surveillance, dependency,cyberattacks, etc.). Given the ever-evolving nature of the IoT, new challenges linked to privacy, transparency, security appear, while new civil and industrialresponsibilities are starting to emerge.IoT is centred around an increasingly complex set of interlinked concepts andembedded technologies. At an industrial level, this growing complexity is makingthe idea of having full control over all components of IoT increasingly difficult, oreven infeasible. However, as a society, we must get to grips with the technologicalfoundations of IoT. One challenge for education will therefore be to graduallyincrease awareness of IoT, both in order to protect individuals’ sovereignty andfree will, and to initiate the training of our future scientists and technicians. Apublic research institute such as Inria can contribute towards understandingand explaining the technological foundations of IoT, in addition to preservingsovereignty in Europe.IoT will inevitably increase dependency on certain types of embeddedt ­ echno­logy. It is hence necessary to identify the new risks that entail, and todevise new strategies in order to take full advantage of IoT, while minimising theserisks. Similarly to the situation in other domains where one must continually seekto preserve ethics without hindering innovation, creating a legal framework forIoT is both necessary and challenging. It nevertheless seems clear already thatthe best way of facing up to industrial giants or superpowers is to take action atthe EU level, as shown by recent examples such as GDPR. Furthermore, given thegrowing influence of technological standards on society, playing an active rolein the process of standardising IoT technology is essential. Open standards andopen source – conceived as a common public good – will be pivotal for IoT, justas they have been for the Internet. Last but not least, massive use of IoT can helpbetter capture and understand the environmental challenges we are ­currentlyfacing – it is also expected IoT will help to mitigate these challenges. The goals inthis context are not only to reduce the quantities of natural resources consumedby IoT (for production, deployment, maintenance and recycling). We must alsoaim to more accurately evaluate the overall net benefit of IoT on the environment,at a global level. This requires determining and subtracting IoT’s environmentalcosts from its (measured) benefits, which is currently a challenge. The growingimpact of IoT underscores the importance of remaining at the cutting edge whenit comes to scientific research and technological development. This documenttherefore aims to (i) highlight the wide range of research fields which are fundamental to IoT, and(ii) take stock of current and future research problems in each of these fields. A number of links are made throughout the document to contributionsmade by Inria. These contributions are, by their nature, diverse (basic and appliedresearch, open source software, startup incubation) and concern the majority ofresearch fields on which IoT is based

Supporting Cyber-Physical Systems with Wireless Sensor Networks: An Outlook of Software and Services

Sensing, communication, computation and control technologies are the essential building blocks of a cyber-physical system (CPS). Wireless sensor networks (WSNs) are a way to support CPS as they provide fine-grained spatial-temporal sensing, communication and computation at a low premium of cost and power. In this article, we explore the fundamental concepts guiding the design and implementation of WSNs. We report the latest developments in WSN software and services for meeting existing requirements and newer demands; particularly in the areas of: operating system, simulator and emulator, programming abstraction, virtualization, IP-based communication and security, time and location, and network monitoring and management. We also reflect on the ongoing efforts in providing dependable assurances for WSN-driven CPS. Finally, we report on its applicability with a case-study on smart buildings

Preliminaries of orthogonal layered defence using functional and assurance controls in industrial control systems

Industrial Control Systems (ICSs) are responsible for the automation of different processes and the overall control of systems that include highly sensitive potential targets such as nuclear facilities, energy-distribution, water-supply, and mass-transit systems. Given the increased complexity and rapid evolvement of their threat landscape, and the fact that these systems form part of the Critical National infrastructure (CNI), makes them an emerging domain of conflict, terrorist attacks, and a playground for cyberexploitation. Existing layered-defence approaches are increasingly criticised for their inability to adequately protect against resourceful and persistent adversaries. It is therefore essential that emerging techniques, such as orthogonality, be combined with existing security strategies to leverage defence advantages against adaptive and often asymmetrical attack vectors. The concept of orthogonality is relatively new and unexplored in an ICS environment and consists of having assurance control as well as functional control at each layer. Our work seeks to partially articulate a framework where multiple functional and assurance controls are introduced at each layer of ICS architectural design to further enhance security while maintaining critical real-time transfer of command and control traffic

Towards a Reference Architecture for Swarm Intelligence-based Internet of Things

International audienceThe Internet of Things (IoT) represents the global network which interconnects digital and physical entities. It aims at providing objects with intelligence that allows them to perceive, decide and cooperate with other objects, machines, systems and even humans to enable a whole new class of applications and services. Agent-Based Computing paradigm has been exploited to deal with the IoT system development. Many research works focus on making objects able to think by themselves thus imitating human brain. Swarm Intelligence studies the collective behavior of systems composed of many individuals who interact locally with each other and with their environment using decentralized and self-organized control to achieve complex tasks. Swarm intelligence-based systems provide decentralized, self-organized and robust systems with consideration of coordination frameworks. We explore in this paper the exploitation of swarm intelligence-based features in IoT-based systems. Therefore, we present a reference swarm-based architectural model that enables cooperation among devices in IoT systems

Toward New Ecologies of Cyberphysical Representational Forms, Scales, and Modalities

Research on tangible user interfaces commonly focuses on tangible interfaces acting alone or in comparison with screen-based multi-touch or graphical interfaces. In contrast, hybrid approaches can be seen as the norm for established mainstream interaction paradigms. This dissertation describes interfaces that support complementary information mediations, representational forms, and scales toward an ecology of systems embodying hybrid interaction modalities. I investigate systems combining tangible and multi-touch, as well as systems combining tangible and virtual reality interaction. For each of them, I describe work focusing on design and fabrication aspects, as well as work focusing on reproducibility, engagement, legibility, and perception aspects