SBIR Phase I: Resource-efficient Remote Monitoring and Diagnostics for Cyber-Physical Systems

This Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) Phase I project aims to develop an efficient remote monitoring and diagnostic software system to detect and diagnose software defects in cyber-physical systems (CPSs). CPSs have the potential to bring about a revolution in efficiency, robustness, and safety in application domains such as smart utility grids and smart health care. To unleash their potential, CPSs must themselves be robust. However, despite state-of-the-art testing, software defects currently do escape into deployed CPSs. Current state-of-practice monitoring and diagnostic systems cannot improve the situation as they were not designed with the constraints of CPSs in mind, which include real-time execution, unreliable links, and resource constrained processors. The proposed technology is aimed at creating a software system capable of monitoring embedded nodes in CPSs for anomalies and providing detailed execution information to quickly diagnose the software defects responsible for any anomalies. The proposed work extends the company's extensive research in efficient collection of information for diagnosing software defects. The company expects to create a prototype monitoring and diagnostic software system for CPSs and demonstrate its effectiveness on existing software defects in CPSs. The broader impact/commercial potential of this project derives from the fact that increasing the reliability and robustness of CPSs will directly increase their adoption in real world applications. CPS technology is directly applicable to a broad range of sectors, including utility grids, smart buildings, manufacturing, health care, transportation, etc. These sectors account for more than $32.3 trillion in economic activity, with the potential to grow to $82 trillion by 2025 - about one half of the global economy. CPSs are thus critical to the national interest in areas such as manufacturing competitiveness, defense, health care, energy production and usage, and disaster monitoring and recovery. Due to the increasing reliance on CPSs in the future, system defects could have drastic consequences. The proposed technology could significantly improve reliability of CPSs by catching defects before they result in significant loss, outages, or failures.