Advisory Field Monitoring

Today the 7th of September 2020, a Virtual Advisory Meeting to the MS@CPS project, was carried out via the Zoom meeting by the NEO team headed by Dr. Nedal Jayousi, the Director of the National Erasmus+ Office – Palestine. The meeting has been held with the participation of all universities partners of the project, and the purpose of the Advisory Field Monitoring meeting is to learn about the activities realized and products developed so far, as well as to see if the project has met any problems in working and/or financial implementation that can be discussed and solved. Dr. Ezzeldeen Edwan from Palestine Technical College-Deir El-Balah together with NEO Director / Dr. Nedal Jayousi opened the meeting and welcomed the participants and then presented a brief summary of the overall implementation of the project activities. Dr. Rashid Jayousi from Al-Quds university presented overall progress in the preparation work package. The team also discussed with NEO the issue of accreditation for the Master program as the main delivery of the project and reviewed with all partners the level of the project implementation, the status of work plans, and the major challenges of the project. The meeting ended with suggestions and recommendations posed by Dr. Jayousi to the project team to go ahead in this program.

MS@CPS open info day

On Wednesday, 26.08.2020, the MS@CPS project partners held an online open info day about the master program. The event was moderated by Palestine Technical College – Deir El-Balah with the presence of all partners. Dr. Ezzaldeen Edwan welcomed all keynote speakers and attendees. The NEO Director, Dr. Nedal Jayousi, the guest speaker, launched the event and explained that the NEO office supports the Palestinian partners of CBHE projects in Palestine and he praised the excellent share they won this year. Dr. Jayousi encouraged the project’s partners to sustain their work on the project during COVID-19 pandemic, as well as to work on getting accreditation as it lies within the priorities of the Palestinian Higher Education Strategic Plan. He encouraged the consortium to proceed with equipment purchase. The event included three consecutive sessions: the first session is “CPS in Academia” and it started with a talk given by Prof. Dr. Roman Obermaisser about Dependable Embedded Real-Time Systems based on Time-Triggered Control. The second keynote speaker Prof. Raimund Kirner talked about Using SIL Arithmetic to Design Safe and Secure Cyber-physical Systems. The second session “CPS in Industry”, started by Dr. Iyad AbuHadrous about turning an IoT idea into a proof of concept. Dr. Marwan Radi talked about the Industrial application of robotics and automation. In the last session, all consortium partners presented details about the master’s program at partner universities including a timeline of admission, admission criteria, features for study, teaching staff, study plan, and available scholarship and student support chances. During the event, the attendees raised a set of questions that were answered by the presenters.

MS@CPS Open Info Day

Join us on Zoom on 26th of August at 9:00 AM CET (10:00 AM Palestine and 8:00 AM Tunisia Time)

https://uni-siegen.zoom.us/j/96063476298…

Keynote Speaker I: Prof. Dr. Roman Obermaisser
Title: Dependable Embedded Real-Time Systems based on Time-Triggered Control

Abstract: Many safety-critical application subsystems demand hard real-time requirements, where the achievement of stability and safety depends on the completion of activities (e.g., reading of sensor values, performing computations, message transmission) in the defined time. In such hard real-time systems, missed deadlines represent system failures with the potential of consequences as serious as in the case of providing incorrect results. The static resource allocation in time-triggered systems offers significant benefits for the safety arguments of dependable systems. However, adaptation is a key factor for energy efficiency and fault recovery in Cyber-Physical System (CPS). This presentation describes research in the area of adaptive time-triggered systems for CPS in order to support adaptation using multi-schedule graphs while preserving the key properties of time-triggered systems including implicit synchronization, temporal predictability, and avoidance of resource conflicts. In addition, we highlight upcoming challenges such as integration with knowledge-based systems and artificial intelligence. The presentation also discusses implications for required competencies and teaching in the area of CPS.

Keynote Speaker II: Prof. Raimund Kirner
Title: Using SIL Arithmetic to Design Safe and Secure Cyber-physical Systems

Abstract: In a safety-critical cyber-physical system each service has a specific level of safety criticality. Safety standards use classifications like Safety Integrity Levels (SIL), to describe the design requirements for the individual services of a system. Techniques like redundancy can be used to achieve higher overall dependability than the used individual components provide. Using the notion of SIL, this can be called SIL arithmetic. Using the concept of SIL arithmetic we point out how different safety standards provide hints for their support of using SIL arithmetic. We highlight the principal benefits of SIL arithmetic and provide simple examples. But the use of SIL arithmetic in a concrete system design can also have its pitfalls. We specifically discuss these issues in the context of scheduling techniques for mixed-criticality systems, where resource shortages are to be handled by the task scheduler.

 

 

 

 

Consortium Meeting

In the context of the recent measures taken by national competent authorities at MS@CPS project participating countries to contain the spread of the coronavirus (Covid-19), the consortium faces mobility restrictions. Moreover, in the light of confirming the first positive Covid-19 case on the campus of the University of Hertfordshire at Hatfield, the University canceled holding all planned meetings at its campus. Therefore, the MS@CPS consortium is forced to cancel its scheduled physical meeting from 16-20 March 2020 at Hatfield and it is replaced it by an electronic meeting on Tuesday, 17.3.2020. The consortium is committed to the announced measures to ensure the safety of its participating members.

Online Meeting

On Tuesday, 17.3.2020, the MS@CPS consortium held an online meeting instead of the scheduled face to face meeting because of imposed travel restrictions to limit Coronavirus (Covid-19) spread. The meeting discussed status, progress and planned activities in the project work packages. The meeting agenda lasted all full day and included presentations from the leaders of project Work Packages. All measures will be taken by the consortium partner universities to ensure a successful implementation of its tasks

The team of MS@CPS at Palestine Technical College – Deir El-Balah (PTC) held a briefing day to present the cyber-physical systems (CPS) in an event that took place at the main meetings hall on the 27th of February 2020. The event is devoted to informing fifth-year students at the computer systems engineering department at PTC about the applications of CPS in different fields. At the end of the event, the panel was opened for questions from the audience about the intended master program.

MS@CPS project at radio Sfax

On the 18 of January 2020, Prof. Faiez Gargouri the local coordinator of the MS@CPS project at the University of Sfax and the project’s team member Dr. Nadia Bouassida participated in a live radio interview program at “radio Sfax” with Dr. Hansen Trichili to present the MS@CPS project and the master program in cyber-physical systems at the university.

Monitoring visit of Erasmus+ office on Tunisia (USF)

On the17th of January 2020, the national Erasmus+ office of Tunisia represented by its coordinator Prof. Adel Alimi accompanied with the coordinator deputy Dr. Nesrine Baklouti conducted the first monitoring visit to the University of Sfax (USF) to evaluate the progress of the MS@CPS project. Prof. Faiez Gargouri the local coordinator of the MS@CPS project at USF and the project’s team presented the project status in preparation activities, curricula development and quality plan. Representatives from Carthage University were present as well. The discussions were very fruitful and Prof. Alimi praised the progress conducted so far. Representatives of the project leader, the University of Siegen in Germany, presented the management status of the project. Other consortium partners participated in this meeting as well via video conference and presented their work progress. The dissemination activities and sustainability plan were presented by the representative of Palestine Technical College – Deir El-Balah, Palestine.

internal workshop at MS@CPS at University of Sfax

The team of MS@CPS at the higher Institute of Computer Science and Multimedia (ISIMS), University of Sfax held an internal workshop on the 4th of January 2020. The team discussed finalizing the accreditation application so the master program can be launched within the year 2020 as planned. It should be noted that the MS@CPS team at Sfax university is headed by Prof. Faiez Gargouri, the director of the higher Institute of Computer Science and Multimedia.