Government launches Cyber Physical Systems programme

April 7, 2017

Department of Science and Technology (DST) has launched Cyber Physical Systems (CPS) programme dealing with self-driven cars, autonomous unmanned vehicles and aircraft navigation systems
The programme is still at a nascent stage. Rs. 3,000-crore has been has been conceived for it and it will first take root in some of the Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs).

What is Cyber Physical Systems (CPS)?

CPS is an interdisciplinary field that deals with the deployment of computer-based systems that do things in the physical world. For example, self-driven cars produced by Google and Tesla.
It is a mechanism controlled or monitored by computer-based algorithms, tightly integrated with the internet and its users.
It involves transdisciplinary approaches, merging theory of cybernetics, design and process science and mechatronics.
In it, physical and software components are deeply intertwined, each operating on different spatial and temporal scales.
Both exhibit multiple and distinct behavioural modalities, and interact with each other in a myriad of ways that change with context.
Autonomous unmanned vehicles (UAVs) and aircraft navigation systems and smart grids (where electricity is optimally distributed on the basis of calculations in real time by micro-processors) also qualify as CPS.

Cyber Physical Systems (CPS) programme

The thrust of the CPS initiative is to break silos in academia and encourage greater synergy between the university scientists and industry.
Under it, centres of excellence would be developed at the IITs and universities. Moreover, there will be dedicated courses on the subject.

Need for CPS programme

CPS is an important technological evolutionary area that needed to be addressed as it has potential to pose unprecedented challenges and also stresses to India’s demographic dividend.
It can be turned into a huge opportunity by ensuring that India’s future workforce is skilled in robotics, artificial intelligence, digital manufacturing, big data analysis, quantum communication and IoTs.
The National Science Foundation of the United States already has identified CPS as a key area of inter-disciplinary research back in 2003. It means that India is late entrant in this technology which has huge potential.

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