Cyber-physical systems: Milestones and research challenges

The guest editorial section of Computer Communications journal provides an overview cyber-physical systems (CPS) by introducing major issues in CPS along with recent research efforts and future opportunities for CPS. The guest editorial section informs that the term CPS has emerged as a promising research paradigm, which involves the combination of control, communication, and computation. CPS is an integration of computation with physical processes where embedded computers and networks monitor and control the physical processes, with feedback loops where physical processes affect computations and vice versa. A key element in CPS is an information and communication technology (ICT) component as a communication medium, which connects the computing and physical elements by information exchange. CPS are also expected to exceed the traditional embedded systems in various aspects such as efficiency, safety, reliability, robustness, and adaptability.