Intelligent Graphical User Interface for Managing Resource Knowledge in Cyber Physical Systems

A Cyber Physical System (CPS) can be viewed as a large networked system, distributed geographically with each CPS site having hybrid computing power. A CPS node can be as simple as a sensor or as structured as a research lab with groups of participants who want to share resources in fulfilling a strategic task, or as complex as an autonomous system which procures and manages its resources with little human intervention. Because of the collective might of CPS nodes, the capabilities of CPS could have far reaching effects in finding solutions to grand challenges in fields that combine science, engineering, and economics. Thus, CPS applications will require resources from different domains. In the absence of central authority to moderate and manage resource requests for CPS services, there is a need to facilitate the coordination of services and cooperation to share resource knowledge among resource providing nodes in CPS. For a sustained development of economic value it is important that knowledge about resources are protected, shared, reused, and redistributed. Towards this purpose we propose a graphical user interface (GUI) at each CPS site. It is to facilitate the management of resource knowledge locally, and allow humans and systems at different CPS sites to interact, discover, query, and share resources globally. We discuss a generic model of resource in which resource data, resource information, and resource knowledge are structurally recorded. A three layered architecture is suggested for managing services hosted by resources. We describe the features of GUI that will assist the management activities at these three layers. The GUI is user-centric, designed on semantic principles, and will faithfully transform resource information into languages that can be shared and communicated securely across the CPS sites.