Against Coordinated Cyber and Physical Attacks- Unified Theories and Technologies

Historically, software assurance technologies and robust fault-tolerant control (RFTC) theory were developed under different assumptions and models. The software assurance technologies are often model-based that require the profile of the physical dynamics and the observation of the system state, which may not be available when physical defects exist. On the other hand, though the existing RFTC techniques can efficiently compensate for the physical damage, it is critical to guarantee that the control software and the sensor data are not compromised.  It is prime time to develop unified models with coherent set of assumptions and supported by integrated technologies, upon which coordinated cyber-physical attacks (CCPA) can be defended much more effectively.  This project will investigate unified models and platforms that represent the scientific understanding of resilient cyber-physical systems (CPS) against CCPA.  The proposed inherently interdisciplinary research will ensure predictable performance for resilient CPS, by leveraging the disciplinary advances in (i) the design and evaluation of robust fault-tolerant control systems yielding significantly enhanced levels of safety in highly unpredictable environments; (ii) the design and implementation of complexity reduction architecture yielding a significant reduction in the verification time from days to minutes; (iii) the development of multi-rate sampled-data control and robust reachability-based attack detection techniques ensuring that the sensor data is reliable; and (iv) the development of cyber-physical co-adaptation that optimizes control performance and computation task scheduling to guarantee system safety and efficient recovery from CCPA.  The target application of this project is unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs).  The technological advancement from this project will provide solutions for the safety and reliability issues faced by today’s CPS and deliver dependable CPS that are applicable without sacrificing functionality or accessibility in complex and potentially hostile networked environment.