Self-organizing Cyber-physical Systems Development with Rough Sets
Eric T. Matson
Purdue University, West Lafayette (USA)The future in the enhancement of cyber-physical system and robotic functionalities lies
not only in the mechanical and electronic improvement of the robots’ sensors, mobility,stability and kinematics., but also, if not mostly, in their ability to connect to other actors(human, agents, robots, machines, and sensors HARMS). The capability to communicate
openly, to coordinate their goals, to optimize the division of labor, to share theirintelligence, to be fully aware of the entire situation, and thus to optimize their fully
coordinated actions will be necessary. Additionally, the ability for two actors to work
together without preference for any specific type of actor, but simple from necessity ofcapability, is provided by a requirement of indistiguishability, similar to the discernment
feature of rough sets.
Once all of these actors can effectively communicate, they can take on group rational
decision making, such as choosing which action to take that optimizes a group’seffectiveness or utility. Given group decision making, optimized capability-basedorganization can take place to enable human-like organizational behavior. Similar tohuman organizations, artificial collections with the capability to organize will exhibit
emergent normative behavior.
The complexity of this type of system does notnecessarily fit into some of the logical conventions of computing. Modeling thevagueness of the real world task environments in which these systems operates calls foran extension of classical theory, especially in the area of indiscernibility andapproximation which must occur in real time decision making.
Eric T Matson, Ph.D., is a Professor and UniversityFaculty Scholar in the Department of Computer andInformation Technology at Purdue University, WestLafayette. He is the Director of the of the Korean
Software Square at Purdue and the co-founder of theM2M Lab at Purdue University, which performs researchat the areas of multiagent systems, cooperative robotics
and wireless communication. The application areas arefocused on safety and security robotics systems. His
research has generated high levels of external funding,approximately 200 published, refereed articles, numerous
MS and PhD students, and practical, demonstrable results

for a number of sponsors. He is on the editorial management of 4 journals and numerous
conferences.
Prof. Matson was a previous member of the Board on Army Science and Technology for
the National Academies of Science, Engineering and Medicine and a member of theBoard on Army Research, Development, Test and Evaluation, Systems, Acquisition, andLogistics (BARSL), Assistant Secretary of the Army (Acquisition, Logistics andTechnology). He has been an International Faculty Scholar in the Department ofElectrical Engineering at Kyung Hee University, Yongin City, Korea, a Visiting
Professor with the LISSI, University of Paris Est, Paris, France, Visiting Professor,
Department of Computer Science and Engineering, Dongguk University, Seoul, South
Korea and in the School of Informatics at Incheon National University in Incheon, SouthKorea.
Prior to his position at Purdue University, Prof. Matson was in industrial and commercial
software development as a consultant, software engineer, manager and director for 14years. In his software development experience, he developed and lead numerous large
software engineering projects dealing with intelligent systems, applied artificial
intelligence, distributed object technologies, enterprise resource planning and productdata management implementations. Prof. Matson has a Ph.D. in Computer Science andEngineering from the University of Cincinnati, M.B.A in Operations Management fromOhio State University and B.S. and M.S.E. degrees in Computer Science from Kansas
State University.