Cyber-Physical Systems

Cyber-Physical Systems

06. 12. 2018

Unlike the real world, the virtual world has clear boundaries. Or at least it has had from the point of view of most people, until recently. The text of letters, artists’ dramatic works, tables of economic data, computer games, programs – all these had physical boundaries defined by the orientation of magnetic domains on the computer hard drive.

This, however, is not fully true anymore, and people are increasingly aware of this. Much of the credit for this goes primarily to the success of SpaceX and their landable, resusable rocket sytems or the development of autonomous driving of vehicles. In these examples, the public began to realise just how much cybernetic and physical systems are interconnected. It is a unique spectacle to see how someone manages a teetering rocket to avoid any damage when landing at a pre-defined location whilst correcting for wind gusts or the rocking of the off-shore landing platform.

Cyber-physical systems began to appear practically at the same as the first idea of using computer technology to control real systems, whether space launchers, production robots, or autonomous lawnmowers.

The research groups in the Faculty of Information Technology of VUT in Brno are engaged in the research of deep integration of computing and physical systems and the research of the feedback control structures in which physical processes influence computing systems and vice versa.

This is, however, no basic or theoretical research, but based on cooperation with industry we build specific prototypes applicable in practice. An example of these applications is a flight simulator for small planes. It is a cyber-physical system that simulates flight of a small plane, including inertia forces applied to a human in a cockpit so that the pilot does not recognise the difference between a real flight and the simulator.

And not only that, in this area, the research groups are also engaged in the research of safety requirements for the physical parts of the cyber-physical systems, computing and network technologies and their abstractions so as to provide adequate bases for  cyber-physical systems, the unification of dynamic physical and computing systems, etc.


The interconnection of information technology with the real world has already been true for many years, and it is obvious that these cyber-physical systems will be essential parts of our lives in the future.

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