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Secure-by-Construction Controller Synthesis of Cyber-Physical Systems

November 2022 – November 2024

Objective
This project advocates a paradigm shift in the development of CPS by proposing a secure-by-construction controller synthesis scheme that considers security properties simultaneously with safety ones during the design phase. To successfully overcome the design challenges encountered in large-scale CPS under complex security requirements, we aim to develop a compositional and automated secure-by-construction design process based on a cross-disciplinary approach combining theoretical techniques from computer science (e.g. assume-guarantee rules) with those from control theory (e.g. small-gain theorems). This project aims to bring a potential solution to the fundamental security issue for the smart society vision by enabling cost-efficient and reliable design for CPS with formal security guarantees.

Background
Cyber-physical systems (CPS) are the technological backbone of the increasingly interconnected and smart world where design faults or security vulnerabilities can be catastrophic. Self-driving cars, wearable and implantable medical devices, smart buildings, and critical infrastructure are some high-profile examples that underscore modern CPS’s security and safety concerns. In the last decades, safety concerns have received considerable attention in the design of CPS, while security analysis is left as an afterthought for later stages. This paradigm results in a costly and lengthy development process due to high-security validation costs. We believe that the security considerations should be elevated as primary design drivers and safety ones to tackle the design challenge of modern CPS.

About the Digital Futures Postdoc Fellow
Siyuan Liu is a Postdoctoral researcher at the Division of Decision and Control Systems at KTH. Before joining KTH, she worked as a research assistant at the Institute of Informatics at Ludwig-Maximilian University of Munich (LMU), Germany, from 2019 to 2022. She received her B.E. degree in Automation Science in 2014 and her M.E. in Control Engineering in 2017 from Beihang University, China. She received her PhD in Electrical Engineering from the Technical University of Munich (TUM), Germany, in 2022. Her research interests include safety and security in cyber-physical systems, compositional analysis of large-scale hybrid systems, and automated verification and control of nonlinear control systems.

Main supervisor
Dimos Dimarogonas, KTH

Co-supervisor
Marco Molinari, KTH
Jana Tumova, KTH

Watch the recorded presentation at the Digitalize in Stockholm 2023 event:

 

Contacts

Picture of Siyuan Liu 1x1

Siyuan Liu

Digital Futures Postdoctoral Fellow, Postdoc project: Secure-by-Construction Controller Synthesis of Cyber-Physical Systems

siyliu@kth.se
Picture of Dimos Dimarogonas

Dimos Dimarogonas

Professor, Division of Decision and Control Systems at KTH, Working group Cooperate, PI: Towards Safe Smart Construction - Algorithms, Digital Twins and Infrastructures, Digital Futures Faculty

+46 8 790 73 26
dimos@kth.se

Marco Molinari

Researcher, Unit of Applied Thermodynamics and Refrigeration at KTH, Co-PI of research project Humanizing the Sustainable Smart City (HiSS), Co-PI of project Digitalized Industry 5.0 research towards a circular economy and community, Digital Futures Faculty

+46 8 790 74 68
marcomo@kth.se
Picture of Jana Tumová

Jana Tumová

Associate Professor, Division of Robotics, Perception and Learning at KTH, PI of project Scavenger: Real-time logic-based control for an autonomous scavenger robot, Digital Futures Faculty

tumova@kth.se