"Making the interconnected world work in a flexible and efficient, but safe and reliable manner to the benefit of society"

Cyber-physical Systems that combine the physical world with the virtual world are starting to play an ever more important role in our daily lives. In this research group, we're looking at the fundamental concepts and challenges to realize the vision of an interconnected world. In particular, we focus on industrial communication systems.

In contrast to human-to-human communication, communication between machines requires a fundamentally new approach. While humans are inherently able to cope with imperfections in communication, machines require predictability. This covers aspects of correctness, latency, and context sensitivity, but also new sensing paradigms.

In our group, we especially focus on (safety-)critical industrial applications (Industry 4.0), but also on enabling new simulation methodologies for complex networked systems. Solving the fundamental challenges in these areas therefore enables the Internet of Everything.

Hot Topics

• In-network processing techniques for industrial control
  • Co-design approaches
  • Predictable system behavior
  • Theoretical and practical limits
• Low-latency ultra-reliable wireless systems
  • Network design
  • Reliability-enhancing strategies
  • Theoretical and practical limits
• Systems engineering and tool development
  • Replacement of Expected Values (mean), with hard guarantees
  • Guided design

Methodology and Tools

To convince stakeholders, new approaches need a solid base in theory, but – more importantly – also need validation and demonstration in practical prototypes. This leads to the following design circle.

1. Requirements analysis
2. Analytical studies using abstract models
3. Simulations and/or verification
4. Real-world experiments
5. Start over

The Cyber-Physical Systems Group always has a range of thesis topics available for motivated and talented students. An excerpt of available theses can be seen from inside the RWTH University network.