AI for cyber-physical systems

AI-guided simulation-based design and verification of cyber-physical systems, particularly in aerospace, critical infrastructures, transportation, logistics.

At RAISE Lab we focus on AI-guided simulation of mission- and safety-critical cyber-physical systems to enable their verification and optimisation via design space exploration.

We develop methods based on both symbolic AI and machine learning as well as software for:

Modelling of system environments and intelligent generation of operational scenarios

A cyber-physical system must operate safely, effectively, and efficiently in its operational environment. Hence, its design and verification on top of just nominal environment behaviour is critically inadequate. Indeed, system design and verification must take into proper account the uncontrollable events that might occur.

We provide means to model the system operational environment and its constraints, and to randomly sample or enumerate system scenarios of interest from within such a constrained space.

Simulation-based verification on system digital twins

We perform system verification by orchestrating the simulation of system digital twins over scenarios extracted from operational environment models.

Statistical model checking

Our methods provide sound guarantees of error probability & accuracy of KPI estimations, as required for system certification and qualification

AI-guided black-box optimisation on system digital twins

We perform intelligent design space exploration on system digital twins to find configurations optimal wrt. one or multiple objectives

Massively parallel HPC simulations

Our methods and software heavily exploit massively parallel high-performance computing infrastructures (clusters of computers) to keep the computation time within the use-case requirements

What-if analyses and decision support

Our methods enable interactive as well as completely automatic what-if analyses and decision support for system (single- and multi-objective) optimisation

Selected publications

Simulation-Based Design of Industry-Size Control Systems with Formal Quality Guarantees

Marco Esposito, Alberto Leva, Toni Mancini, Leonardo Picchiami, Enrico Tronci. IEEE Transactions on Industrial Informatics, 2025.

Scaling up statistical model checking of cyber-physical systems via algorithm ensemble and parallel simulations over HPC infrastructures

Leonardo Picchiami, Maxime Parmentier, Axel Legay, Toni Mancini, Enrico Tronci. Elsevier Journal of Systems and Software, 2024.

Optimizing Fault-Tolerant Quality-Guaranteed Sensor Deployments for UAV Localization in Critical Areas via Computational Geometry

Marco Esposito, Toni Mancini, Enrico Tronci. IEEE Transactions on Systems, Man, and Cybernetics: Systems, 2024.

Optimising Highly-Parallel Simulation-Based Verification of Cyber-Physical Systems

Toni Mancini, Igor Melatti, Enrico Tronci. IEEE Transactions on Software Engineering, 49(9), pages 4443-4455, 2023.

Any-horizon uniform random sampling and enumeration of constrained scenarios for simulation-based formal verification

Toni Mancini, Igor Melatti, Enrico Tronci. IEEE Transactions on Software Engineering, 48(10), pages 4002-4013, 2022.

Reconciling Interoperability with Efficient Verification and Validation within Open Source Simulation Environments

Stefano Sinisi, Vadim Alimguzhin, Toni Mancini, Enrico Tronci. Simulation Modelling Practice and Theory, 109, pages 102277, 2021.

A Two-Layer Near-Optimal Strategy for Substation Constraint Management via Home Batteries

Igor Melatti, Federico Mari, Toni Mancini, Milan Prodanovic, Enrico Tronci. IEEE Transactions on Industrial Electronics, 69(8), pages 8566-8578, 2022.

Parallel Statistical Model Checking for Safety Verification in Smart Grids

Toni Mancini, Federico Mari, Igor Melatti, Ivano Salvo, Enrico Tronci, J.K. Gruber, B. Hayes, M. Prodanovic, L. Elmegaard. In proceedings of the 2018 IEEE International Conference on Smart Grid Communications (SmartGridComm 2018). Aalborg, Denmark. IEEE, 2018.

Residential Demand Management using Individualised Demand Aware Price Policies

Barry Hayes, Igor Melatti, Toni Mancini, Milan Prodanovic, Enrico Tronci. IEEE Transactions on Smart Grid, 8(3), pages 1284-1294, 2017.

IDRA

VHF/UHF Communication System based on Swarms of CubeSats (Consulting activity, Italian PNRR fund)

Rome Technopole – Flagship 6

Artificial intelligence, virtual reality, and digital twin for advanced engineering and aerospace (Consulting activity, Italian PNRR fund)

SDFS

Satellite Driven Fire Simulator (Italy Lazio Region POR FESR 2014-2020, Aerospace)

SCAPR

Advanced System for Countering Unmanned Aerial Vehicles / Sistema per il Contrasto di Aeromobili a Pilotaggio Remoto (Italy Lazio Region POR FESR 2014-2020, Aerospace and security)

ESA-ITI-AO6067

Model Checker Validator for Satellite Operational Procedure (ESA ITI, European Space Agency)

ULISSE

USOCs KnowLedge Integration and Dissemination for Space Science Experimentation (EC FP7-SPACE-2007-1, European Commission)

INTERCEPTOR

Motion Planning with moving obstacles (Consulting activity, INTECS s.p.a.)

SINTESI

Advanced Sense and Respond System (Consulting activity, EgoLab s.r.l.)

SAPP

Advanced System for Optimal and Fault-Tolerant Positioning of Relays Nodes in a Radiogoniometry System (Consulting activity, Log.In s.r.l.)

SSFRT

System and Software Functional Requirements Techniques (ESA ITT AO5459, European Space Agency)

TRAMP

Integrated Management and Control System for the Safe Transport of Dangerous Goods / Sistema Integrato di Gestione e Controllo per il Trasporto in Sicurezza di Merci Pericolose (Italy Ministry of University and Research, Aerospace, Lazio region)

IRRIIS

Integrated Risk Reduction of Information-based Infrastructure Systems (Consulting activity, ENEA)

SETRAM

A Logistic Expert System for the Optimisation of Multimodal Freight Transportation (Consulting activity, ENEA)

SAFEGUARD

Intelligent Agents Organization to Enhance Dependability and Survivability of Large Complex Critical Infrastructures (Consulting activity, ENEA)

SAFETUNNEL

Safe Tunnel (Consulting activity, ENEA)

ICARO

Safety Analysis of ICARO Cogenerative Plant (Consulting activity, ENEA)

RAISE

RAISE Research Lab in Artificial Intelligence for Systems Engineering