Authors belonging to different institutions (‘schools’) of cyber-physical systems (CPSs) research and development report on largely different objectives, underpin their work with different theories and methodologies, and target characteristics which can actually better characterize other categories and families of engineered systems. This has resulted in an ontological chaos. Therefore, our research addressed the question: What exists in the form of past, current and future CPSs? Our hypothesis has been that we can have an ordered picture on the landscape of CPSs by introducing the notion of system generation. Generation is a structural term defined as a ‘technological/engineering cohort’ of different individual manifestation of systems that reflect genotypic features of ancestor systems belonging to the same category, but deviates from them with regards to their phenotypic features. Based on our literature findings, we have defined five generations of CPSs, which could be differentiated based on: (i) the level of self-intelligence, and (ii) the level of self-organization. The zeroth generation includes look-alikes and partial implementations of CPS. The 1G-CPSs include systems with self-regulation and self-tuning capabilities, while the 2G-CPSs are capable to operationalize self-awareness and self-adaptation. The 3G-CPSs are equipped with the capabilities of self-cognizance and self-evolution. According to our reasoning model, only the fourth generation of CPSs is supposed to achieve self-consciousness and self-reproduction in the form of system of systems. The paper analyses the major paradigmatic characteristics of these generations. It also provides an outlook to the trends that may have strong influence on the introduced generations of CPSs.

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Abstract:This paper presents an analysis scheme which aims to support a systematic study of required situation awareness (RSA). This scheme supports identification of deficiencies of support for situation awareness (SA). Information needs are goal and task dependent and can be defined using existing cognitive task analysis (CTA) methods. RSA, however, is a subset of information needs and depends on the interaction between goals, tasks, system factors and individual factors. The analysis scheme has helped to identify that the current methods to define RSA do not support a distinction between information needs and RSA. The scheme was trialled in a nautical traffic management context as an extension to existing CTA methods. The research activities necessary to study RSA and to identify deficiencies of current support for SA in nautical traffic management context were applied. The study showed that the research set-up designed through application of the analysis scheme helped to define RSA, and that RSA is considerably context and operator dependent. Future research will focus on the potential for context-aware adaptable interface solutions to allow for RSA dependent information visualisation.Keywords: man-machine interactions; MMI; required situation awareness; information needs; situation awareness requirements; analysis scheme; deficiencies; nautical traffic management; information intensive task environment; informing.Reference to this paper should be made as follows: van Doorn, E., Rusák, Z. and Horváth, I. (2017) This paper is a revised and expanded version of a paper entitled 'A systematic approach to addressing the influence of man-machine interaction on situation awareness' presented at

Efficacious stroke rehabilitation depends not only on patients' medical treatment but also on their motivation and engagement during rehabilitation exercises. Although traditional rehabilitation exercises are often mundane, technology-assisted upper-limb robotic training can provide engaging and task-oriented training in a natural environment. The factors that influence engagement, however, are not fully understood. This paper therefore studies the relationship between engagement and muscle activities as well as the influencing factors of engagement. To this end, an experiment was conducted using a robotic upper limb rehabilitation system with healthy individuals in three training exercises: (a) a traditional exercise, which is typically used for training the grasping function, (b) a tracking exercise, currently used in robot-assisted stroke patient rehabilitation for fine motor movement, and (c) a video game exercise, which is a proliferating approach of robot-assisted rehabilitation enabling high-level active engagement of stroke patients. These exercises differ not only in the characteristics of the motion that they use but also in their method of triggering engagement. To measure the level of engagement, we used facial expressions, motion analysis of the arm movements, and electromyography. The results show that (a) the video game exercise could engage the participants for a longer period than the other two exercises, (b) the engagement level decreased when the participants became too familiar with the exercises, and (c) analysis of normalized root mean square in electromyographic data indicated that muscle activities were more intense when the participants are engaged. This study shows that several sub-factors on engagement, such as versatility of feedback, cognitive tasks, and competitiveness, may influence engagement more than the others. To maintain a high level of engagement, the rehabilitation system needs to be adaptive, providing different exercises to engage the participants.

Enhancing engagement of patients during stroke rehabilitation exercises are in the focus of current research. Various methods and computer supported tools have been developed for this purpose, which try to avoid mundane exercising that is prone to become a routine or even boring for the patients and leads to ineffective training. This paper introduces an engagement enhancing cyber-physical stroke rehabilitation system (CP-SRS) aiming at enhancing the patient's engagement during rehabilitation training exercises. This paper focuses on introducing the implementation and validation of the engagement monitoring subsystem (EMS) in the CP-SRS. The EMS is expected to evaluate the patient's actual engagement levels in motor, perceptive, cognitive and emotional aspects. Experiments in these four aspects were conducted separately, in order to characterize the range and accuracy of the engagement indicators by influencing the subjects into different engaged states. During the experiments, different setups were created to mimic the situations in which the subject was engaged or not engaged. The subjects involved in the experiments were healthy subjects. Results showed that the measurement in motor, perceptive, cognitive, and emotional aspects can represent the corresponding engagement level. More experiments will be conducted in the future to validate the efficiency of the CP-SRS in enhancing the engagement with stroke patients.

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In this paper, we present an innovative mediated reality-oriented, real-time software system designed to support multimodal collaboration among remote CSI experts and forensic investigators at the crime scene. Our prototype integrates state-ofthe art technologies for stereo navigation, 3D digital mapping and adaptive hand gesture-based user interface for natural interaction. The multimodal interface accepts mouse inputs, audio and hand gestures possibly while interacting with a purposively designed physical object. The evaluation done by a panel of international CSI practitioners [5] using an adapted Burkhardt et al. method [1], shows that our prototype system genuinely fits into the common practice of forensic investigation while clearly boosting the quality of collaboration. At the moment, the system is under consideration for routinely being adopted as part of special procedures by The Forensic Institute in The Hague, The Netherlands [6].