Government launches Cyber Physical Systems programme

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.

Month: Current Affairs - April, 2017