Abstract: The objective of this research is to develop foundations for the newly emerging generation of Networked Cyber-Physical Systems (NCPS). NCPS present many intellectual challenges not suitably addressed by existing computing paradigms. They must achieve system-wide objectives through local, asynchronous actions, using distributed control loops through the environment.

Abstract

This research is motivated by the observation that especially in challenging environments, that exhibit many forms of unreliability and failures, the physical world imposes severe limitations on how distributed algorithms can operate. Inspired by earlier work on delay- and disruption-tolerant networking, we have developed a distributed computing model based on partially ordered knowledge sharing that makes very few assumptions about the underlying network, its topology, and its characteristics.