An abstraction layer for controlling heterogeneous mobile cyber-physical systems

Mobile Cyber-Physical Systems (CPSs) widely vary in the underlying hardware technologies and capabilities of their mobile devices (e.g., robots). This makes the problem of developing portable high-level Mobile CPS applications difficult, since applications are typically written for specific devices. To this end, this paper present a framework that relies on abstracting the representation of the mobile devices in a manner that allows the system to fully utilize the capabilities of the hardware while providing a simplified interface to the enduser that can work across different devices. This framework incorporates a physics engine to handle different physical models of different mobile devices to ensure better control. We assess the behavior of our proposed framework through real experiments conducted in our Mobile CPS lab with various iRobot Creates. We show that we can achieve better control accuracy through exploiting the physical characteristics of the mobile devices, rather than relying solely on the driver interface of the devices.