Teaching cyber-physical systems to computer scientists via modeling and verification
Kostadin Damevski, Badreldin Altayeb, Hui Chen, David John Walter · 2013
The greater versatility and increasingly smaller sizes of computing, sensing, and networking devices have resulted in a new computing paradigm called Cyber-Physical Systems (CPSs), which integrates computation and sensing into physical processes producing a wealth of exciting applications in many domains of life, such as transportation, medicine, and agriculture. In order to equip students with the essential knowledge and skills to be successful in the future, this paradigm requires an expansion in the scope of computer science curricula to enable students to understand and overcome the complexity inherent in CPSs. In this paper, we describe our experience with teaching CPS via a set of course modules that rely heavily on modeling and verification. By using the popular Android platform, we aim to engage students to successfully build CPS applications while enhancing their understanding of intellectually challenging concepts.