Hacker News Reader

Comment by subjectsigma | Hacker News Reader

https://www.google.com/search?q=cyber+physical+systems

Factory equipment, vehicles, drones, power grids, medical robots, HVAC, … the list goes on.

Also involved with some of these industries, no academia/government though, so my perspective may be incomplete. Anecdotally I can’t remember hearing this term used.

After reading the Wikipedia page and a couple corporate pages about cyberphysical, I think it looks like it’s more about rebranding existing systems that contain interacting heterogenous elements with different RT needs, rather than introducing fundamentally new systems methodologies or technologies. It kinda reminds me of Agile, where a shift in mindset and terminology was hyped way more than any legitimate improvement in the underlying systems being built, and engineering “Agile products” became so important for some businesses.

I work in the industry that builds and integrates most of that stuff. We don't use that term. It's marketing woo which is why the other commenter has probably never heard it.

I work in defense and it is extremely common. That doesn’t mean it isn’t marketing fluff, but I was genuinely surprised they didn’t know and/or thought they were being snarky.

> It's marketing woo

Nah, it's a term used in academia.

IIRC it started with government institutions and think tanks, and quickly adopted by academia.

Yeah, you pick up .gov buzzwords pretty quickly if you want your grants approved.

Feels like a term used in academia unrelated to the actual field itself...

Reply on news.ycombinator.com