1.4: Smart Planet
Creating the Smart Planet Other Information:
Creating the Smart Planet -- A smarter world will be one in which all kinds of objects, devices, and large-scale physical
systems are interconnected, compute-empowered, and instrumented to perform tasks with, on behalf of, and in the best interest
of people. This infrastructure will also enable people to collaborate in real time, dynamically creating short-term ad hoc
networks linking them to devices, data, and information, computing platforms, and applications as needed. Some components
of the smart planet infrastructure will be stand-alone robotic systems designed to perform tasks autonomously; others will
be what are now called cyber-physical systems. These are networked computing systems -- interconnected software, microprocessors,
sensors, and actuators -- deeply integrated within engineered physical systems to monitor and control capabilities and behaviors
of the physical system as a whole. Such systems are already essential to the effective operation of U.S. defense and intelligence
systems and critical infrastructures, industrial-process control systems, and other largescale civilian systems, as well as
to smaller-scale applications in cars and medical devices. Demand for and uses of cyber-physical systems are growing worldwide.
Where we are now -- computing was once a minimal component of engineered systems, and systems were designed to be operated
separately and in benign or controlled environments. Now the "cyber" aspects of engineered systems and products are becoming
the very key to making these systems more capable. And the need for deployment is increasingly in situations where systems
must be designed to interact and cooperate, often with high degrees of autonomy. This is illustrated in the rapidly growing
demand for increased capability in transportation, manufacturing, agriculture and mining, and medical diagnosis and therapies.
Society benefits when surgery can become less invasive, reducing recovery times. Advances in computer-controlled robotic and
laser surgery (such as those enabled by the da Vinci® medical robotic system) are in this direction. The U.S. industrial economy
has depended upon the productivity of its workforce -- enabled by its technological capability -- for relative U.S. strength
in industrial sectors worldwide. That lead has declined as other nations have rapidly joined the technology race and have
sought to produce ever-more sophisticated products and systems. Research needs -- a new systems science is needed to provide
unified foundations, models and tools, system capabilities, and architectures that enable innovation in highly dependable
cyber-enabled engineered and natural systems. Better understanding of system complexity is also necessary in this research
area to aid in improved management and decision support. Specific technical areas for emphasis include: * Unifying foundations
for modeling, predicting, and controlling systems that exhibit combined cyber (logical/discrete/digital) and physical (continuous/analog)
system behaviors * New approaches for supervisory control of systems that must interact on an ad hoc basis * Scientific and
engineering principles, metrics, and standards that integrate the disciplines of real-time embedded systems, control, communications/networking,
security, and humanmachine interaction * Technology to close the design and productivity gap between modeling, programming,
and runtime execution of cyber-physical systems * Principles for reasoning about and actively managing properties of complex,
multiscale, real-time cyber-physical system interactions, including safety, security, reliability, and performance * Design
methods and systems technology for autonomy, human interaction, and management of control authority * Open systems approaches
for composition, integration, and coordination of cyber-physical systems
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