Seminars

Establishing liabilities in component-based systems is a challenging task, as it requires to establish convincing evidence with respect to the occurrence of a failure, and the causality relation between the failure and a damage. The second issue is especially complex when several failures are detected and their impact on the occurrence of the damage has to be assessed. In this talk I will propose a formal framework for reasoning about logical causality between component failures and the violation of a system-level specification.

I will provide an overview of GE, GE Research, and the "Systems & Synthesis" lab. Our  mission is to develop solutions that accelerate systems & sub-systems development & integration through software synthesis, V&V, and large systems discrete event simulation technologies. Our team consists of Controls Engineers, Electrical, & Systems Engineering with a focus on embedded software development & test as well as Formal methods for requirements capture, analysis & design validation & verification. My talk will focus on how we are tying these technologies to…

Wireless networked control systems are the integration of physical processes with wireless networked computing units. The co-design of control policies and network configuration must take into account the joint dynamics of communication protocols/channels and physical devices/processes. In this talk we first give a brief overview of the state-of-the-art on wireless networked control systems. Then we present some recent advances in the co-design of control tasks over wireless networking protocols subject to long term (e.g. failures, malicious attacks) and short term (e.g. dynamic routing,…

This talk will focus on the attacker-defender interactions on electricity distribution networks (DNs) that typically have a tree-like topology. Two attack models will be introduced: (i) manipulation of distributed energy resources by a strategic adversary; and (ii) energy diversion by fraudulent customers. In the first model, the DN operator (defender) responds to the adversary’s action by imposing voltage control and partial load shedding.  This model is used to assess the vulnerability of electricity distribution networks under disruptions of distributed energy resources. In the second…

Cyber-physical systems (CPS) such as autonomous and semi-autonomous vehicles, smart buildings, and industrial automation systems, are poised to bring immense economic and societal benefits. However, the design of these systems faces tremendous challenges from the rapid increase of system scale and heterogeneity, the close interaction with dynamic environment and human activities, the employment of multicore and distributed architectural platforms, and the stringent (and often conflicting) requirements on various design metrics. To address these challenges, it is critical to have a new set…