Software Engineering Issues for Cyber-Physical Systems

Cyber-Physical Systems (CPS) provide many smart features for enhancing physical processes. These systems are designed with a set of distributed hardware, software, and network components that are embedded in physical systems and environments or attached to humans. Together they function seamlessly to offer specific functionalities or features that help enhance human lives, operations or environments. While different CPS components play important roles in a successful CPS development, the software plays the most important role among them. Acquiring and using high quality CPS components is the first step; however, designing and implementing the right software to integrate and use them effectively is essential. The software facilitates better interfaces, more control and adds smart services, high flexibility and many other added values and features to the CPS. However, software development for CPS is not a trivial task. This paper provides an overview discussion of software engineering issues related to the analysis, design, development, verification and validation, and quality assurance of CPS software. Some of these issues are related to the nature/type of CPS while others are related to the complexity of the software development processes used to develop such systems.