A guide to design uncertainty-aware self-adaptive components in Cyber–Physical Systems

Cyber–physical systems (CPS) need to be designed to deal with various forms of uncertainties associated with data contributing to the system’s knowledge and its belief of the environment. Dealing with uncertainties requires adopting appropriate methods, which then allow for making the right decisions and carrying out the right actions based on imperfect information. However, CPS design is difficult and requires attention to many variables during the design process. For instance, choosing and incorporating methods for dealing with uncertainties into CPS design requires identifying the kinds of uncertainties at hand as well as knowledge of suitable methods and their application. While inspiration can be found in other CPS designs, the details of dealing with uncertainties in other CPSs can be confounded by domain-specific terminology, context, and requirements. To make this aspect of CPS design less daunting, we aim at providing an overview of approaches dealing with uncertainties in the design of CPS targeting collective behavior. To this end, we present a systematic review of relevant scientific projects with industrial leadership and synthesis of relations between system features, the kinds of uncertainties, and methods used to deal with them. The results provide an overview of uncertainties and challenges across different domains, and reason about a guide for designing uncertainty-aware self-adaptive components in CPS.