22, Jun, 2009
Montreal, Quebec, Canada
Homepage: http://www.cs.mcgill.ca/~xueliu/Confs/WCPS2009/
Deadline: 10, Jan, 2009

We are currently witnessing the emergence an infrastructure for a technical, economic and social revolution that is enabled by Cyber-Physical Systems (CPS). Cyber-physical systems are physical and engineered systems whose operations are integrated, monitored, and controlled by a computational core. The integration of computational and physical processes exhibit complicated behavior that can not be analyzed by the computational or physical sciences alone. These systems also transcend traditional computer-controlled systems because of their scale, dependence on man-machine interaction and their rich communication infrastructure that is enabled by the Internet.
Some of the most challenging R&D software problems for cyber-physical systems are those associated with producing distributed, real-time, and embedded platforms and applications, and where computer processors control physical, chemical, or biological processes or devices. Examples of such systems include airplanes and air traffic control systems, automobiles, power grids, oil refineries, and patient monitoring systems. Despite advances in standards-based commercial-off-the-shelf (COTS) technologies, key challenges must be addressed before COTS software can be used to build mission-critical distributed real-time embedded (DRE) systems effectively and productively. Furthermore, there are existing critical infrastructures that over-see the operations of everything from nuclear power plants to traffic lights and yet they may not even be able to accept static upgrades, or patches, or any dynamic instability, but they will remain with us for quite some time. Dynamically retrofitting these systems while maintaining their stability within a cyber environment is a significant challenge yet to be overcome.
The International Workshop on Cyber-Physical (WCPS2009) is an international forum for researchers to exchange information regarding advancements in the state of the art and practice of CPS, as well as to identify the emerging research topics and define the future of CPS. The technical program of WCPS2009 will consist of invited talks, paper presentations, and panel discussions.