A Semantic Agent Framework for Cyber-Physical Systems

The development of accurate models for cyber-physical systems (CPSs) is hampered by the complexity of these systems, fundamental differences in the operation of cyber and physical components, and significant interdependencies among these components. Agent-based modeling shows promise in overcoming these challenges, due to the flexibility of software agents as autonomous and intelligent decision-making components. Semantic agent systems are even more capable, as the structure they provide facilitates the extraction of meaningful content from the data provided to the software agents. In this book chapter, we present a multi-agent model for a CPS, where the semantic capabilities are underpinned by sensor networks that provide information about the physical operation to the cyber infrastructure. As a specific example of the semantic interpretation of raw sensor data streams, we present a failure detection ontology for an intelligent water distribution network as a model CPS. The ontology represents physical entities in the CPS, as well as the information extraction, analysis and processing that takes place in relation to these entities. The chapter concludes with introduction of a semantic agent framework for CPS, and presentation of a sample implementation of the framework using C++.