Event-Driven Distributed Cyber-Physical Systems
Federico M. Zegers, Sean A. Phillips, Warren E. Dixon · 2025
With the advent of computers and digital processors, cyber-physical systems (CPSs) have become ubiquitous in our daily lives. A CPS combines digital hardware, software, and subsystem interfaces to create (potentially large complex) systems that interact with the physical world to sense, monitor, and control physical processes. An active focus area within this community is the interconnection of multiple CPSs over a communication network to distribute the capabilities and workloads of traditional monolithic systems. Networks of CPSs that 1) cooperate via a communication network, 2) do not require commands from a central agent, and 3) can make their own decisions using local measurements and communicated information are known as distributed cyber-physical systems (DCPS). Some examples of such systems include self-driving platooning cars, autonomous aerial vehicles, intelligent transportation systems, networked satellite systems, and smart buildings.