Mode Change Management for Adaptive Cyber-physical Systems

Cyber-physical systems are usually integrated with a highly changing environment. Because of the variability of their environment, these systems need to adapt their behaviour at runtime to achieve the expected results. In the case of distributed solutions, this behaviour must be consistent across the continuum, increasing the complexity of the design due to the need to synchronise the different components distributed in the multiple nodes. A multimode application approach could be used to solve this need, assuming it is implemented as a distributed system. The approach involves applications with multiple behaviours (or operational modes) and a mechanism to change from one mode to another. This article describes an operational mode change management solution based on that approach and the reference architecture presented in the TRANSACT project. This architecture integrates CPS end devices at the edge of the network with edge computing servers and cloud computing facilities. Static and dynamic views are included to describe the solution, and specific use case scenarios are added for better understanding.