February 26, 2016, Webb 1100

In many cyber-physical systems, human interaction with coupled cyber and physical components can significantly complicate system safety and performance. We consider two problems in human-in-the-loop CPS: 1) user-interface design, and 2) controller synthesis for probabilistic safety. The user-interface, which provides information to the user about the underlying automation, and allows the user to issue input commands to the system, is key for enabling situational awareness and trust of the automation, yet is often designed in an ad-hoc fashion. We propose the development of observability and reachability techniques to improve reliability in safety-critical cyber-physical systems, by predicting, at the design stage, configurations under which failures might occur. Observability techniques can determine whether the user has adequate information to accomplish a known task; reachability techniques can prevent the system from reaching configurations known a priori to be unsafe. Such techniques could form the basis of design aids for human-in-the-loop CPS.

Meeko Oishi is an Associate Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering at the University of New Mexico. She received the Ph.D. (2004) and M.S. (2000) in Mechanical Engineering from Stanford University, and a B.S.E. in Mechanical Engineering from Princeton University (1998). Her research interests include nonlinear dynamical systems, hybrid control theory, control of human-in-the-loop systems, reachability analysis, and modeling of motor performance and control in Parkinson’s disease. She previously held a faculty position at the University of British Columbia at Vancouver. She is the recipient of the NSF CAREER Award, the UNM Regents’ Lecturer Award, the UNM Teaching Fellowship, the Peter Wall Institute Early Career Scholar Award, the Truman Postdoctoral Fellowship in National Security Science and Engineering, and the George Bienkowski Memorial Prize, Princeton University. She was a Summer Faculty Fellow at AFRL Space Vehicles Directorate 2013–2015.