Renato Mancuso Looks to Find Ways to Make Cyber-Physical Systems Safer

Assistant Professor of Computer Science Renato Mancuso and members of his team at the Cyber Physical Systems Lab are researching new ways to improve cyber-physical systems, such as self-driving cars or planes. Specifically, Mancuso is looking to decrease the amount of time it takes for a self-driving car to sense an object in the road, apply the brakes, and, if necessary, deploy the airbags. To achieve this goal, the lab works with both software and hardware, improving both the context awareness of the system and the self-awareness. It is important that cyber-physical systems can react to their surroundings and determine how to respond in as little time as possible.

Another goal of this project is to make these improved systems more cost-effective. In order to bring more safe self-driving cars to the market, companies will want to use commercial systems off the shelf, not NASA level systems which cost billions of dollars. Mancuso aims to make these high-assurance cyber-physical systems at a fraction of the cost.

Read the full story by Mara Sassoon from Arts & Sciences here.