As increasingly impressive automation capabilities continue systematically expanding in sophistication, breadth, and depth, technology leaders at forward-thinking firms proactively yet carefully seek out comprehensive cyber-physical systems integration solutions capable of smoothly tying together vast arrays of sensors, adaptive controllers, predictive streaming analytics, prescriptive diagnostics, and closed-loop real-time optimization modules together under consistent data models and centralized software architectures as part of larger overarching automated innovation pipelines.
Accordingly, over the recent handful of years, multitudes of diligent data and business analysts, architectural review board members, forward-thinking engineers, and various additional stakeholder constituencies find themselves needing to thoroughly evaluate salient options balancing advantages and limitations inherent across custom in-house platform development initiatives, integrations with large third party commercial vendor product suites, incorporations of generalizable open source software frameworks, and purposefully designed hybrid combinations thereof.
As part of offering balanced contextual guidance within emerging disciplinary domains, I discuss several key multidimensional factors warranting deliberation when objectively assessing platform applicability across wide-ranging potential automated innovation use cases encompassing advanced robotics, precisely scheduled predictive maintenance routines, continuous multivariate quality assurance monitoring, expansive regulatory compliance auditing capabilities, and far beyond.
1. CPS Wind Tunnel (CPSWT)
The comprehensive Cyber-Physical Systems Wind Tunnel platform focuses intently on providing aerospace manufacturers streamlined access to an intricate mix of highly sophisticated rapid cyber-physical systems prototyping design, modeling, simulation, and computational analysis capabilities spanning across intricate interdependent aerodynamics, propulsion, structural mechanics, and control systems subdomains. Empowered engineers can utilize the convenient CPS Wind Tunnel platform’s beginner-friendly graphical workflow configuration environment to iteratively execute finely tuned parametric studies designed to holistically evaluate intricate subsystem component interaction phenomena significantly earlier in system development cycles which best positions firms to optimize resources allocated towards constructing intermediate physical prototypes before committing funds for final production tooling and factory retooling activities.
2. Mosaik
As an exceptionally flexible, vendor-neutral smart grid co-simulation orchestration framework platform, Mosaik’s primary emphasis focuses intently on interoperability above all else by ambitiously positioning itself as a practically universal open integration hub architecture empowering expert users to feasibly couple sets of specialized third-party energy grid infrastructure simulators manufactured by otherwise competing commercial vendors across a remarkably wide spectrum spanning advanced power flow analysis tools, empirically grounded market trading and auction modeling technologies, adaptive automation controllers, and far beyond without the need for extensive custom coding. Mosaic’s comprehensively documented open application programming interface specifications significantly simplify integration tasks thereby minimizing consultant costs for energy companies without large internal software engineering teams.
3. Functional Mockup Unit (FMU)
The open cross-platform Functional Mockup Unit standard fundamentally defines a portable packaged format for bundling model evaluation execution containers with onboard independent solver engines. By comprehensively encapsulating intricate simulation models within these convenient self-contained FMU packages, expert users gain streamlined model exchange workflow capabilities across a remarkably wide spectrum of modeling, simulation, and automation toolchain products spanning otherwise competing commercial software vendors and open-source platforms.
4. Cyber-Physical Systems Platform (CPS-P)
The open-source Eclipse Cyber-Physical Systems Platform (CPS-P) offers an extensive freely available toolchain promoting more accessible model-based design approaches for developing intricate networked embedded control systems typical of automated innovation initiatives across industrial sectors. Tight version control integration between user-friendly modeling environments optimized for rapid graphical prototyping and robust programming tools enabling automated generation of dependable deployable application code empowers contributors across large dispersed teams to achieve impressive results without extensive programming expertise.
5. Cyber-Physical Systems Integration Platform (CPSIP)
As a rapidly emerging commercial cyber-physical systems integration solution option within recent years, CPSIP emphasizes providing enterprise development teams intuitive model-based system engineering workflow templates covering requirements gathering, specifications analysis, multidimensional modeling, simulation, testing, verification, validation, and centralized reporting modules across the full product lifecycle. CPSIP’s template-driven questionnaires allow business analysts to thoroughly capture intricate system requirements and specifications spanning traditional functional needs, safety, security, and real-time performance concerns. Empowered engineers graphically map out elaborate system architectures using CPSIP’s integrated diagrams then subsequently leverage the robust modeling, simulation, and dynamic analysis generator to create digital twins.
6. Cyber-Physical Systems Development Platform (CPSDP)
As an ambitious open-source initiative, the Cyber-Physical Systems Development Platform (CPSDP) project conveniently bundles an extensive collection of mature open-source software technologies into a cohesive platform-as-a-service offering deliberately designed to serve as a streamlined cloud-based development springboard solution well-suited for global cross-functional teams collaborating on leading-edge cyber-physical systems integration platform development projects. By containerizing core toolchain elements with Docker to achieve consistent encapsulations limiting otherwise tedious complex local environment configuration tasks, the CPSDP platform development team effectively incorporates reliable modeling, realistic simulation with hardware-in-the-loop testing, formal model checking, comprehensive test automation and holistic monitoring components with built-in enterprise-grade version control, granular user access controls and thorough audit logging.
7. Cyber-Physical Systems Simulation Platform (CPSSP)
As an emergent vendor-agnostic co-simulation orchestration solution, the Cyber-Physical System Simulation Platform’s primary emphasis focuses on providing project engineering leads, principal investigators, and lab directors streamlined tools to holistically manage intricate variable time step parallel execution of elaborate simulator sets without requiring extensive technical skills. By pragmatically avoiding reliance on unnecessary intermediate data synchronization points, CPSSP’s unique asynchronous self-optimizing calculation execution engine minimizes messaging bottlenecks while dynamically auto-scaling cloud infrastructure when running incredibly demanding multi-physics simulations.
8. Cyber-Physical Systems Optimization Platform (CPSOP)
The Cyber-Physical System Optimization Platform ambitiously bundles hundreds of optimization algorithms specifically tailored to comprehensively support design space exploration and real-time optimization of intricate cyber-physical systems integration platforms. By streamlining access to these categories of unquestionably compute-intensive iterative approximation methods including multi-objective genetic algorithms, simulated annealing, and particle swarm techniques, the CPSOP effectively facilitates automated controls tuning, cloud-based predictive maintenance implementations, dynamic supply chain scheduling, and various additional challenges associated with systems containing elaborate feedback loops.
9. Cyber-Physical Systems Visualization Platform (CPSVP)
As real-time sensor data velocities, varieties and volumes continue reliably expanding at exponential year-over-year rates across proliferating cyber-physical systems integration platform deployments, the Cyber-Physical Systems Visualization Platform appropriately focuses connectivity tier efforts on providing project engineers and operational analytics units alike streamlined access to visual exploratory discovery experiences containing highly scalable streaming multidimensional visualizations representing key performance indicators enhanced with timely alert modules and historical trend analyses. Without requiring coding skills from users, customizable analytical dashboards empower rapid insights into relationships between hundreds of sensor streams feeding into adaptive control systems.
10. Cyber-Physical Systems Control Platform (CPSCP)
Through repeatedly demonstrating impressively unified cyber-physical systems integration development capabilities, the Cyber-Physical Systems Control Platform provides control systems engineers across industrial sectors with access to a remarkably intuitive model-based development environment deliberately tailored to optimize systems engineering activities surrounding controller design, simulation, auto-coded generations, dynamic verification, optimization-based tuning, certified code generators, and model-in-the-loop testing processes.
