{"title":"Editorial: Embedded, Cyber-Physical, Hybrid…","authors":"S. Shukla","doi":"10.1145/2678027","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"This editorial is the last one in Volume 13 of this journal. Thanks to the ACM publications staff especially Laura Lander, our journal assistant, Ms. Jeyel Tecson, and, most importantly, our production manager, Joanne Pello. We have been able to fit all the pending special issues and many articles waiting in the queue for a very long time inside the various extra issues of Volume 13, some of which are online-only issues to save pages and time. The next issue will begin Volume 14 of this journal, and I note that with great admiration for everyone who helped us clear the immense backlog – in particular the special issue articles. Before I briefly summarize the content of this last issue of Volume 13, let me bring up a topic germane to this journal and to the entire field of embedded systems research and education. It is about terminology, taxonomy of research areas or sub-disciplines that often confuse us, and often launch us into great debate at conference venues and other meeting places. This journal is titled Transactions on Embedded Computing Systems. What exactly does the discipline \" embedded computing systems \" entail? These days, the most thrown-around term is cyber-physical systems (CPS). In the mid-nineties there were a lot of discussions on hybrid systems (HS). What are their ontological relationships? It is actually interesting to note that, while all of these are related and often used in place of each other, certainly, chronologically, CPS is the newest buzzword that has been making the rounds for about the last 10 years, starting with the US federal funding agencies and gradually reaching worldwide acceptance. Hybrid systems initially meant systems where at least two models of computation interact – in particular, a continuous time one, representing the dynamics of a physical system, and a discrete time one, representing digital computer-based implementation of control algorithms that oversee such physical dynamics. In the early nineties, much of the research in hybrid systems saw a convergence of control systems research and digital implementation of control algorithms. In particular, the main focus was on formal models as well as the representation and analysis of such models for verification and synthesis purposes. Hybrid automata, rectangular automata, hybrid I/O automata, timed automata, and many other formal model and analysis techniques were proposed and implemented. Certainly, these models and analysis techniques that originated from the need to verify that control …","PeriodicalId":183677,"journal":{"name":"ACM Trans. Embed. Comput. Syst.","volume":"126 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0000,"publicationDate":"2014-12-15","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":"0","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"ACM Trans. Embed. Comput. Syst.","FirstCategoryId":"1085","ListUrlMain":"https://doi.org/10.1145/2678027","RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":null,"ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"","JCRName":"","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 0
Abstract
This editorial is the last one in Volume 13 of this journal. Thanks to the ACM publications staff especially Laura Lander, our journal assistant, Ms. Jeyel Tecson, and, most importantly, our production manager, Joanne Pello. We have been able to fit all the pending special issues and many articles waiting in the queue for a very long time inside the various extra issues of Volume 13, some of which are online-only issues to save pages and time. The next issue will begin Volume 14 of this journal, and I note that with great admiration for everyone who helped us clear the immense backlog – in particular the special issue articles. Before I briefly summarize the content of this last issue of Volume 13, let me bring up a topic germane to this journal and to the entire field of embedded systems research and education. It is about terminology, taxonomy of research areas or sub-disciplines that often confuse us, and often launch us into great debate at conference venues and other meeting places. This journal is titled Transactions on Embedded Computing Systems. What exactly does the discipline " embedded computing systems " entail? These days, the most thrown-around term is cyber-physical systems (CPS). In the mid-nineties there were a lot of discussions on hybrid systems (HS). What are their ontological relationships? It is actually interesting to note that, while all of these are related and often used in place of each other, certainly, chronologically, CPS is the newest buzzword that has been making the rounds for about the last 10 years, starting with the US federal funding agencies and gradually reaching worldwide acceptance. Hybrid systems initially meant systems where at least two models of computation interact – in particular, a continuous time one, representing the dynamics of a physical system, and a discrete time one, representing digital computer-based implementation of control algorithms that oversee such physical dynamics. In the early nineties, much of the research in hybrid systems saw a convergence of control systems research and digital implementation of control algorithms. In particular, the main focus was on formal models as well as the representation and analysis of such models for verification and synthesis purposes. Hybrid automata, rectangular automata, hybrid I/O automata, timed automata, and many other formal model and analysis techniques were proposed and implemented. Certainly, these models and analysis techniques that originated from the need to verify that control …