Grant: Discovery Grants Program - Individual

Advances in computing, communications, and control have generated a significant level of interest in development of new generation of highly networked and sensor rich systems that are employed in variety of applications that involve cyber and physical systems as well as humans, and broadly to what is known as Cyber-Physical Systems (CPS). These complex and distributed systems now necessitate development of novel computing, communicating, and control technologies that are more than ever pervasively human-centric and are ultimately envisaged to lead to a safer, more reliable and securer and better world. This is an area of significant importance globally as two recent reports (GE and US National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST)) estimate that the technical innovations of CPS could find direct applications in sectors with the potential to grow to $82 trillion of output by 2035, about one half of the global economy. The envisaged CPS do more than ever require development of novel and proactive cyber protection and resilient recovery control technologies, as these systems are continuously being targeted by malicious cyberattacks and intrusions introduced by intelligent adversaries. The adversaries are capable of attacking core embedded control systems that are employed in CPS. These scenarios do not exist and are not possible or similar to security challenges that are present in traditional IT computer systems. Our overall objective in this research is to therefore develop formal and theoretical frameworks for design of optimal integration of cyberattack, intrusion and anomaly detection, protection, and survivable and resilient control recovery methodologies for critical CPS with specific emphasize on application to autonomous network of unmanned vehicles and multi-agent systems (ANUMV/MAS). The main objective of this research program is on development and implementation of novel approaches, new technologies and methodologies that allow ANUMV/MAS operate reliably and safely in presence of malicious cyberattack intrusions by intelligent adversaries. Innovative approaches and methodologies that are aimed at seamlessly integrate intrusion and diagnosis, survivable, and resilient control recovery, and communication architectures and schemes will be investigated and developed in this research. The main research goals are therefore to design and develop proactive intrusion cyberattack and health monitoring, detection, and resilient control recovery methodologies that are characterized by their general features that enable them to be a component of the next generation of 24/7 available distributed critical ANUMV/MAS. This is an area of significant strategic importance to Canada due to the fact that existing health monitoring, control, communication, and computing technologies do NOT fully support an efficient, robust, survivable, and modular design for simultaneously managing malicious cyberattacks and anomalies on ANUMV/MAS.