Component level cyber-physical systems integration: A light fixtures example

Digitally addressable lighting systems offer tremendous opportunities for performance monitoring and control of individual light fixtures. However, the locations of individual light fixtures within a building are not easily differentiable; as such, facility managers cannot easily distinguish and control each fixture. Virtual models contain semantic representation of objects which enable users to visually identify, distinguish and interactively monitor and control building components. To monitor and control light fixtures from these models, each physical fixture needs to be tightly integrated with its virtual representation such as to enable bi-directional coordination. Bi-directional coordination between virtual models and physical light fixtures offers tremendous opportunities for enhancing progress monitoring during construction, and performance monitoring and control during the operations and maintenance phase. Thus, this paper presents an approach to component-level cyber-physical systems integration using light fixtures as an example. A system architecture describing the enabling technologies and their roles is presented and a practical implementation is also presented to demonstrate the functionality and utility of the proposed approach.