International Federation of Automatic Control (IFAC) Conference on Cyber-Physical & Human-Systems (CPHS 2016)

Massachusetts Institute Of Technology, Cambridge MA

Investigators

Abstract

This award will help defray travel costs for ten or more US graduate students and postdoctoral researchers to travel to Florianopolis, Brazil, for the first International Federation on Automatic Control (IFAC) Conference on Cyber-Physical and Human Systems (CPHS). Cyber-Physical Systems (CPS), in which the physical world interacts with information technology and data flow, remain a challenging research area. However the research needs are even greater when humans are introduced. Research groups around the world are making progress in advancing the field of automatic control in areas such as smart prosthetics and medical implants; human control of robots and vehicles; large-scale integration of autonomous, semi-autonomous, and human-controlled vehicles; and smart and connected urban infrastructure. This award will enable early career scholars to present and discuss their work to an international audience that they would otherwise not have the resources to access. Likewise, this conference travel grant will provide them the opportunity to learn about work being done at institutions that they would otherwise not have the resources to visit. This conference will address various roles humans may play in regard to cyber-physical systems. The CPS may be directly controlled by human operators, the CPS may operate autonomously with the objective of empowering specific human activities, humans may be components in a CPS whose objectives are not directly aligned to human goals, or humans they may be acting against the goals of a CPS. The goal of the conference is to direct and coordinate activities of the international community of control science and engineering researchers to the many opportunities and newly emerging results in these areas.