M.Tech Cyber Physical Systems at IIT Jodhpur Offline Course

Master of Technology in Cyber-Physical Systems is a two-year full-time course offered by the Indian Institute of Technology, Jodhpur.

Beginning in the first decade of 21st century and continuing today, computational and communication resources, tightly integrated with physical systems, shaping the new capabilities for the modern systems. The use of computational resources to achieve different capabilities is in existence for several decades. However, many modern systems have high degree of complexities and also the scale of these systems is large and/or has distributed nature. For example traffic control system in a city requires modelling of traffic flows in different areas and optimizing different performance objectives by appropriately taking routing decisions, and decisions about actuating different signals for smooth traffic flow; this is a large scale distributed system. There are several other domains where CPS examples can be seen e.g. Healthcare, Robotics, Automotive, Power Grid, Avionics and Transportation. Such system necessitates a deeper understanding of system behaviour and also provides feedback to augment system design to achieve overall objectives from the system. Emergence of ubiquitous computing and communication has open enormous opportunities to provide new capabilities to systems e.g. robotics assisted remote surgery. Many (small) systems can work in collaborative/cooperative manner to achieve a larger overall objective. The examples can be seen in robotics and modern warfare where collaboration/cooperation achieves larger objectives. The communication capability also provides a possibility of distributed learning for systems. Hybrid system modelling is one of the possible approaches to model CPS. Hybrid system approach allows inclusion of both continuous time and discrete time states (variables) in the model.

The seamless integration of cyber system with physical system also poses several challenges towards system security against possible system attacks. With modelling of physical system, it is necessary to model different possible attacks and to provide adequate security at hardware and software to ensure overall system security in all scenarios. The cyber component includes hardware and associated software. The design of cyber component also requires software level abstraction to have system level model of cyber component. This also allows designing a very high reliability system as the model allows a predictable behaviour. Conventionally software is developed without formal models and largely depends on programmers’ experience and knowledge; however, requirement of safety, reliability in CPS demand higher level of abstractions at software level as well. This allows the system remains correct and secure by design.

Objective of the Program

The program aims to produce competent engineers who can design engineered systems that are built from seamless integration of physical system and cyber systems. The program will enable engineers with required competency to design software-hardware architecture. The program also imparts knowledge of several tools for modelling physical systems and tools for designing cyber components. The program will produce professionals who can design predictable and secure Cyber Physical Systems (CPS).