Resource-Aware Cyber-Physical Systems Design

The heart of the software in many embedded systems contain one or more control algorithms. For example, a modern car contains several hundreds of millions of lines of software code implementing various control algorithms spanning across several domains like basic functionality (engine control, brake control), driver assistance (adaptive cruise control), safety (crash preparation systems) and comfort (vibration control). However, control algorithms have traditionally been designed to optimize stability and control performance metrics like settling time or peak overshoot.

The notions of efficiency that are prevalent in Computer Science - such as efficient utilization of computation, communication and memory resources - do not feature in the list of design criteria when designing control algorithms. This is in spite of the large volume of software code implementing control algorithms in many domains, as mentioned above.

It is only recently that the control theory community has focussed on designing control algorithms that efficiently utilize implementation platform resources. Such control algorithms turn out to be very different from those which were designed using approaches that were platform resource agnostic.

In this talk we will discuss how a "Computer Science approach" is important for designing control algorithms and how such an approach embodies the principles of what is today referred to as cyber-physical systems design.

Bio:
Samarjit Chakraborty is a Professor of Electrical Engineering at TU Munich in Germany, where he holds the Chair for Real-Time Computer Systems. From 2011 – 2016 he also led a research program on embedded systems for electric vehicles at the TUM CREATE Center for Electromobility in Singapore, where he also served as a Scientific Advisor. Prior to taking up his current position at TU Munich in 2008, he was an Assistant Professor of Computer Science at the National University of Singapore from 2003 - 2008. He obtained his Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering from ETH Zurich in 2003. His research interests include distributed embedded systems, hardware/software co-design, embedded control systems, energy storage systems, electromobility, and sensor network-based information processing for healthcare, smart-buildings and transportation. He was the General Chair of Embedded Systems Week (ESWeek) 2011, and the Program Chair of EMSOFT 2009 and SIES 2012, and regularly serves on the TPCs of various conferences on real-time and embedded systems. During 2013-2014, he also served on the Executive Committee of DAC, where he started a new track on Automotive Systems and Software along with Anthony Cooprider from the Ford Motor Company. He serves on the editorial boards of IEEE Transactions on Computers, ACM Transactions on Cyber-Physical Systems, Leibnitz Transactions on Embedded Systems, Design Automation of Embedded Systems and Springer's Lecture Notes on Electrical Engineering. For his Ph.D. thesis, he received the ETH Medal and the European Design and Automation Association's Outstanding Doctoral Dissertation Award in 2004. In addition, he has received Best Paper and Demo Awards at ISLPED, ICCD, RTCSA, ASP-DAC, EUC, Mobisys, and several Best Paper Award nominations at RTSS, EMSOFT, CODES+ISSS, ECRTS and DAC. In addition to funding from several governmental agencies, his work has also been supported by grants from General Motors, Intel, Google, BMW, Audi, Siemens and Bosch.