Ruchkin Receives NSF CAREER Award To Make Cyber-Physical Systems Aware of Their Limitations

As work on improving cyber-physical systems (CPS) barrels ahead, Ivan Ruchkin, Ph.D., has some concerns. Loosely defined as mechanisms controlled and monitored by computer algorithms, CPS have some basic susceptibilities—rare events and unexpected circumstances can cause the system to react in unsafe or incorrect ways. Thanks to funding from the Nation Science Foundation—$600k over five years—Ruchkin aims to correct this. Ruchkin’s recently funded CAREER project, “Rigorous Assumption Engineering for Learning-Enabled Cyber-Physical Systems,” works toward his vision of assumption-aware CPS—ones that behave with an understanding of their own assumptions and limitations.

Part of the problem, as Ruchkin explains, is that as CPS grow in complexity and process large high-dimensional data, human engineers struggle to understand and formalize the underlying systemic assumptions, which severely limits the effectiveness of system validation and monitoring. Put another way, if human engineers aren’t sure of the assumptions powering a system, how can they ensure the system is working correctly and safely?

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